The Interview [RSC Film Club 30]

[LimeGreenLegend 4,277]

This month's film club is all about controversy, films that got people riled up for whatever reason.  The winning film was nominated by @Beezand is the 2014 comedy The Interview, directed by Seth Rogen and and Evan Goldberg.

The film stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as a talk show host and his producer who manage to arrange an interview with Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un (Randall Park).  When the CIA learn of this, they recruit the two to assassinate him.  You can probably see where the controversy comes from here.  A few months before it was released North Korea threatened action against the USA if it were to be.  This led Sony to heavily edit the film, and release it online instead of in theatres, of which it only got a limited run.  Sony were also hacked by a group called the Guardians of Peace, who the FBI traced to North Korea, and they threatened terrorist attacks against any cinema showing the film.  All of this over a stoner comedy full of d*ck and fart jokes.

In the end, nothing really happened, and this film seems to have fallen through the cracks of the collective pop culture memory.  When I watched it a few years ago I remember really liking it, especially Park as Kim Jong-un, and the hilarious cameo by a famous rapper.  I preferred Rogen and Goldberg's previous film, the apocalyptic meta-comedy This Is The End, but I'm still looking forward to revisiting this.  

this is 2014, women are smart now

[Beez 5,091]

There is an app called Just Watch (I’m sure there are others) that will tell you where a movie or series is streaming. Looks like The Interview is on HBO Max.

[LimeGreenLegend 4,277]

21 minutes ago, Beez said:

There is an app called Just Watch (I’m sure there are others) that will tell you where a movie or series is streaming. Looks like The Interview is on HBO Max.

And in the UK it's on Amazon Prime.

[djw180 6,980]

A film of two halves for me. Though the very beginning, the 'death to America' song by the little North Korean girl is great, it then rapidly degenerates into a very average modern-day comedy relying on innuendo and cheap nob-gags for laughs for the next 50 mins or so. Not that I am against that sort humour. But I can't help comparing this to Team America, for obvious reasons, and Parker and Stone do that sort of humour very well. There just wasn't much that made me laugh in the first half of this film. The main characters of TV presenter Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapport (Seth Rogen) were not actually that funny for me. But it all changed when they finally get to North Korea and meet the subject of their interview. Randal Park gives a stand out performance as Kim Jong Un, and from the first moment we meet him, meekly knocking on Skylark's door and asking to talk, the film changes gear and is great from there on. There are some good references to other films in there. Does the scene in the restaurant when Kim is started to get annoyed with his henchmen remind anyone else of Al Capone in the Untouchables getting similarly angry? (I was kind of expecting someone to get their head smashed in with a baseball bat.) And I really like the way the closing credits were done as Stalinist style propaganda posters.

 

So overall worth watching and bearing with the first half for the fantastic second.

 

6/10

[Con 5,719]

The Interview (2014)

Well that was interesting. The one thought that permeated while I watched the film was...."Man, when you make Hollywood money, they will let you make anything. Good for Seth Rogen. I wish that was me". Because this film was kind of all over the place. But I should start with the things I liked...

The courage to make this film knowing about the real life death threats is admirable. I liked the ambition of the project. I enjoyed the overall production design, especially the newsroom segments. I appreciated the gore in the last act, I didn't see that coming at all and while jarring to say the least, it surprised me and while not the best execution (see the biting off fingers moments) the shock was fun for an old gore-hound like myself. I like what James Franco did with the Dave Skylark character, he was over the top but so charismatic and that's all on Franco which reminds me what a shame it is that he has been accused of having a pattern of exploiting women at his acting school. I'm sitting here like, dude, you dont need to push up on women that dont want to bang you, there are plenty of women that already wanna do that. I don't want to believe the accusations but we get drunk with power and you have these attractive ladies signing up for your acting class and you can basically come up with any scene scenario to get them to disrobe, etc. So, yeah, I believe some of what is being said about him. Cause I then think of dudes like Keanu Reeves who has never been accused of s*xual misconduct and that dude even got my damn grandmother crushing on him. Okay back to the review. The one time I can recall chuckling genuinely was during the 'stinky finger/d*ck' moment when the CIA arrives for the first time to meet with Dave Skylark and Aaron Rappaport. And yes, I kind of felt dirty laughing at the joke cause of Franco's allegations and this film was released in 2014, the same year Franco was caught hitting on a 17 year-old from Scotland and a year later in 2018, he was accused by four women of s*xual misconduct. By the way, I find it odd that it took Rogen until now in 2021 to denounce his working relationship with Franco.

One thing I disagree with @djw180is that i actually preferred the first part of the film because that is where I felt the best jokes were executed and just the whole getting to know the dictator was fun. Although I would have liked more bi-polarism from the dictator in those early scenes because I didn't feel he was unhinged under the surface enough and I can see why in the last act, the dictator character seems more fleshed out. Now I know this was more of a fantasy film. And while I give some of the things i disliked a pass due to this, I can't say I was impressed with the film overall. Yes,, while I liked the first half of the film first, I can't deny that in some places it is just too slow. Another thing, did this movie have to be over two-hours??? I mean, where was the substance that merited it to be this long in telling a fantasy story. I liked the fake supermarket scene and only wished that they would have used that concept more to reveal the deception of living in North Korea. I felt they missed so many opportunities to tell a solid story that didn't necessarily call out North Korea, but other countries with similar dictatorships. My least favorite scene in the film, while gory, was the fighting in the Korean broadcasting room. The finger biting was just overdone a bit (pun intended). I think i just disliked that scene so much because it highlighted just how disjointed I felt the tone of the entire thing was. The film suddenly turns  into gory action film out of nowhere.  I love graphic violence in film....when done with a serious purpose. For laughs, it just doesnt work for me. 

I'm having a hard time finding more to say about this film as it really didn't work for me. Take a different historical fantasy film like, Inglorious Basterds (2009), it works because the violence isn't there for cheap laughs. The end of that film seems real. The end of The Interview looked like everyone was in on this big joke, and I guess we were. I had no expectations going into this and I'm happy I didn't. I wish it had more jokes instead of the same few rehashed jokes throughout the film. Then again, making jokes about  a population starving while the dictator gets closer to getting diabetes everyday, isn't going to get the belly-laughs from me. 

Final Verdict...2/5....Not a film I plan on re-watching anytime soon. The concept was intriguing but the general execution was bland and I think the film could have been more enjoyable if the length was shorter. For me the biggest flaw was the comedy, it wasn't dynamic like I'm used to it being coming from the mind of Seth Rogen. I would have told Seth to have written it so they get to Kim with the poison in their first attempt, but it's a Kim imposter, but everyone is too dumb to realize that the imposter has been assassinated thinking it was a natural death and then bring out the real Kim. Then have Dave force Kim to prove he is the real Kim, and Kim proves his identity when he tells the story about his father telling him margaritas were for gays. I would have laughed if i thought, “oh sh*t they got to him, they got him to shake hands.” Only to be like, “nope, we killed the imposter. How many imposters are there?” No one knows. That could have been funny. But what do I know from filmmaking and storytelling. 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Con