THE INTERVIEW

Directors: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen

Screenplay: Dan Sterling

Cast: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Randall Park

Rating: 3⁄5

Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone no longer takes the crown for the best use of a Katy Perry song. This award now surely goes to The Interview, a film that has become a lot more famous thanks to a certain country’s rather irrational reaction towards the film’s release. After this you will never hear the song ‘Firework’ the same way again. The controversy-ridden comedy starts out with James Franco and Seth Rogen as two ordinary Americans working in the entertainment industry unwittingly recruited by the CIA to achieve the almost impossible – to assassinate the leader of North Korea, Kim Jung Un (Randall Park). Turns out, Kim is a big fan of the chat show hosted by Dave Skylark (Franco), and produced by Aaron Rapaport (Rogen).

Franco and Rogen are essentially playing the same roles they have done in their many, many collaborative films. It takes a while to get used to the over-the-top, chaotic behaviour of Skylark, often more irritating than anything else from the moment he appears on the screen, but thankfully for the audience there is Rapaport’s character to keep things a little more grounded in the opening scenes.

Before entering North Korea as Kim’s invited leaders there are moments of hilarity as Skylark and Rapaport get settled into their new roles of working as spies. The two actors once again share a brilliant chemistry, going through the ups and downs that test their friendship and push their buttons.

Events become more complicated as Skylark in particular gets to know the North Korean leader on a personal level; it turns out that Kim is not quite as evil as the Western media has portrayed him to be over all these years. He is a leader struggling to appease his people, live up to the standard of being a feared, ruthless President while living under the shadow of his father who has set the bar pretty high when it comes to doing anything that violates human rights, when he would rather be sitting around sipping on margaritas, listening to Katy Perry, his guilty pleasure music, whilst playing basketball. It is an interesting, comical take on a real-life figure we think we know well. Not that this film is in any way trying to convey something non-fictional in the narrative, but the image of the leader of North Korea being a cheerful, boyish man-child played brilliantly by Park certainly has its moments of highly effective comedy.

It does start to lose it in the film’s climax – there is a vomit-inducing burst of a violent action sequence that involves the control of a joystick stuck inside an unlucky North Korean soldier’s orifice, but aside from that grim/riotous (delete as appropriate) addition, there is nothing too creative that will hold your attention. The jokes on offer are a mixed bag of hits and misses, ranging from poking fun at racial stereotypes, to the juvenile poop jokes, often venturing into the more adult world of sexual misadventures and innuendos.

North Korea was right to be upset by this of course; no one wants to see their Supreme Leader portrayed in this way, but here it is anyway, for the rest of world to sit back and laugh at how easy it would be to achieve peace and democracy in North Korea. Just ask Seth Rogen and James Franco.