My main
problem with people who boycott things like movies and books
and the such, is that they usually end up doing it before
actually seeing or reading the work that has them all
upset. They pull out picket signs and burn stuff in
effigy mainly because somebody somewhere told them too.
Now if Supreme Ruler Kim Jong-un gets on Google Play and
shells out his hard earned six bucks, just like I did, to
watch 'The Interview'… well… let's just say if he wanted to
point one of his defective ICBM's our way and end our
imperialistic dog rule… I'd completely understand. But I
know he didn't do that, so I will advise the Supreme Ruler to
keep his six bucks in his pocket, because quite honestly,
considering all the ruckus this Moron-Com caused, it wasn't
worth it.
Dave Skylark (James Franco) is the host of some Hollywood type
talk show and Aaron Rappaport (Seth Rogen) is his
producer. I'm trying to think of a real world equivalent
to this show, but truly nothing is coming to mind. Maybe
'The View' if The View was even more vapid than it already
is. Regardless, Dave and Aaron are bros to the end,
since they seem to live together, despite the fact they both
have really, really good jobs and probably could get their own
places, they party together… in fact I think they do
everything together except have sex with each other, which
very well could be happening as well. I can neither
confirm nor deny this. Not that there's anything wrong
with that, of course.
The problems start with Aaron, who is tired of being a
lightweight, and wants to do some hard journalism. The
opportunity arrives when the bro's hear that Kim Jong Un is a
big fan of their show and actually grants Dave an
unprecedented one-on-one interview. Yay! But then
CIA agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) shows up and informs the bro's
of this golden opportunity to use this interview to strike a
blow for FREEDOM by assassinating the North Korean
leader. The plan she's devised is really simple, but
these two, of course, are morons.
Anyway, they
land in North Korea, and it's not nearly as bad as we all have
heard. Aaron for his part has met the fetching Lt. Sook
(Diana Bang) who will show him around… about that broken
English Asian accent Ms. Bang was using… at times I think she
went Russian on us. Pretty sure that was a Russian
accent I heard. And Dave has met Supreme Ruler Un
(Randall Park) and he, as it turns out, is one awesome
dude. Dave has officially been bromanced, and the
mission is in jeopardy.
Until Supreme Ruler turns out to be not so awesome and now the
mission is back on for real. But now our Moronic Heroes
have to do this on their own, as opposed to easy plan that was
originally laid out for them, with action and hilarity sure to
follow. In theory at least.
Here's the thing about 'The Interview' in that it is a fairly
typical Seth Rogen / Evan Goldberg cinematic experience.
Meaning it's tasteless, it's moronic, it's funny in spots,
it's not very funny in other spots, and none of this stops
Seth Rogen from still being my personal hero. Because
he's overweight and marginally talented, similar to myself…
minus the marginal talents… and he has taken those gifts and
created an amazing career for himself.
But back on point, all I'm saying is if it wasn't for the
whole hacking incident, this movie would've come and gone just
like so many mediocre movies that that the movie machine
releases on a weekly basis, and it's highly unlikely that I
would've even bothered to watch it, until it rolled around on
HBO in a couple of years, but because I love freedom, I gave
Sony six bucks of my hard earned dollars, which is basically
two days of work for me. We're all about Freedom here at the
FCU.
'The Interview' actually starts out pretty funny, especially
with the opening scene in the People's Republic, and then
there's the satire elements on the Hollywood talk shows which
are also funny and clever, but eventually the movie just runs
out of steam. Not surprisingly, the script starts to
rely on penis and anus jokes for a lot of its humor, and then
in the third act 'The Interview' almost completely stops
trying to be funny and becomes an odd version 'Die Hard 3' or
something. That didn't work too well either.
'The Interview' didn't need or deserve the scrutiny it has
received as it was a fairly typical moron-com, but I'm
thinking that blowback from the hacking incident, while bad
for Sony overall, has actually been good for this movie.
Freedom, in the form of profits, wins again.
