Preface

• I saw The Interview in between edits of my Worst of 2014 video, so my busy-ness with that editing cut my time for a review of this.
• Nevertheless, let’s talk about the most controversial movie since Interstellar!

Cast and Characters

• Alright, so James Franco and Seth Rogen are the leads in this movie, and most people said it was pretty typical of the two for Franco to be the wild-guy and Rogen to be the straight-man (which both are in this movie).
  • But I’ve never really seen that. Seth Rogen is always going up the rails on the crazy train in my opinion.
  • He was a bit more subdued in this movie though, and really was the straight-man against Franco.
• The two characters that these guys played: funny.
  • Franco’s was funnier than Rogen’s but only because of his downward spiral.
  • I’ll talk more about the consistency of this movie in a little bit, but it did play a factor in how much I liked the characters.
  • I preferred Franco’s character Dave Skylark because he was so out-of-his-mind, absurd, wild, crazy from the start and only got more insane from there, gradually becoming funnier and funnier as he got weirder and weirder.
  • With Rogen’s character, though, it felt like he stayed consistently normal throughout the movie, but then when the last 25-minutes hit he’s become as insane as Franco, which just seemed a bit bizarre to me…
• The guy Randell Park who actually played Kim Jong-Un in this movie was really funny in the movie!
  • The only work by the guy that I had seen before was Neighbors (in which I don’t remember his character AT ALL) and If Google Was a Guy (where he played Bing.
    • Yeah I IMDb’d the guy.
  • I really hope he starts getting more work cuz he’s hilarious!
• The other good actor in the movie was Diana Bang who played Sook, the advisor/political something-a-rather to Kim Jong-Un (and love interest of Rogen).
  • Her character could have been really, really one-note and boring but she made it good and entertaining especially for an inexperienced actress.
• And of course this movie is riddled with celebrity cameos that were fun as usual.
  • The one in the first 5 minutes of the movie was probably the best and I’m not even a huge fan of him or her (keepin’ it vague if you haven’t seen it…).

Runtime

• I really like it when comedies are shorter.
  • Judd Apatow’s movies are good, but would be great had they each shaved off a good 25 minutes.
  • Neighbors and 22 Jump Street were awesome last year because they never dragged and hit all the funny moments without going on too long.
• And this would’ve been a great comedy! Had it been done in like 55 minutes or an hour.
• I’ll get into Script later, but this movie hit its peak in the first ten minutes with that awesome cameo, then it was pretty good for the next 40-50 minutes or so.
• But then after that tiger scene you see in the trailer, it feels lackluster, by-the-book and not as funny as the movie was up until that point.
  • I was thinking back on some of this movie earlier today, prepping for this review, and realized what went wrong: Seth Rogen and James France work REALLY well with each other.
  • So when those two are split up about an hour into the movie, it just isn’t as funny.
• If this movie was like 85 minutes, would it feel short? Yeah.
  • But would it feel more compact and consistent (-ly funny)?  Yeah!

Script

• The middle-ish part of the movie may not have been as funny, but at least the writing was pretty solid.
• The final act of this movie, the last 25 minutes are (kinda spoiler?) the actual interview between James Franco and Kim Jong-Un.
• And that part was entertaining!
  • The parts with Kim Jong-Un in the last 25 minutes are super entertaining but (without spoilers) there’s this other storyline going on at the same time, and that’s what brought the movie down a bit for me too.
• Alright, I understand what comedies are.
  • You look at 4 of my favorite comedies: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, American Pie, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, and 21 Jump Street.
  • Each of those (except maybe American Pie) are fairly unrealistic, like they have their bits where you recognize this is a movie and that crap wouldn’t happen in real life!
  • But there’s a difference between “hyper-reality comedy world” and straight-up “ this is right out of Family Guy nonsensical B.S.”
• And the second storyline during the actual interview hits that second one.
  • This Is The End established, “okay, we’re in the apocalypse so most of this is unbelievable.”
  • But when you’re making a movie that is supposed to have these hints of political undertones to it, you can’t do just dumb humor like that second storyline!
• Also (and this isn’t a complaint): so much of this movie is so stupid.
  • Those of you who have read this site before know my distinguishing between stupid humor and dumb humor.
    • Stupid humor is 22 Jump Street of Neighbors, where it’s all just absurd but you laugh at just how absurd it gets!
    • Dumb humor is something like an Adam Sandler movie, where he starts insulting the intelligence of the viewing audience but how absurd he fails at being.
  • And this movie is stupid the whole way through, without getting too dumb.
    • I just wish it had SOME smart elements to it for people who go to see it and liked how smart This Is The End was.
    • But yeah, when my dad and brother asked me how the movie was after I saw it, my summary was simple, “it was SO stupid but at least it was in the fun way.”

Final Stray Observation

• The last thing that I did like about the movie was this small theme it had in the beginning.
• In The Newsroom (Season 3 Review coming soon, I’ve just been too lazy to get to it…) they discuss what real news is, and how it should be covered.
• And I loved that this movie tackled that concept in a really cool way during the first act (or so) of it.
• I heard one or two critics, along with many of my friends, say, “this was a brilliant political satire of a film that criticized the governmental structure of–,” shut up.
• This was no political satire, it still had as many fart jokes as 22 Jump Street.
• If this film was critiquing anything, it was the media and that is something I commend it for.

In Conclusion

• At the end of the day, this movie is sitting around a 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that’s about where I’d put it on a scale of 1-100.
  • This is the movie that everyone pretended to love because it was almost banned, and that your local news channel told you was breaking new ground, when it was really a by-the-book comedy.
• The controversy around it got so blown-up and made The Interview seem like this God of a film, but it isn’t!
• I thought Neighbors was funnier, I thought This Is The End was funnier, I thought 21 and 22 Jump Street were A LOT funnier.
• This was a meh of a comedy that had some really funny, albeit stupid parts, some really bizarre writing at the end, a first half that was a lot better than its second half, and ultimately a premise that would’ve been a lot funnier in 90 minutes.
• So you don’t need to rush to see this movie, but if you’re bored some day, then you can check it pretty much anywhere online.

3/5

• The only thing that would’ve gotten this movie more hyped is if Sony let them make a “For Your Consideration” spot!

***

So guys, those are my thoughts on The Interview! And I would ask for your thoughts on it, but I don’t want to start any controversy myself among you all, so I’ll ask: what’s your favorite Seth Rogen movie? Let me know in the comments down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.