Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg directed The Interview, their second film behind the camera after This Is the End. Dan Sterling wrote the screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Rogen and Goldberg. The film runs 112 minutes and lands as an action comedy. It is funny in places and slack in others, and it never quite decides how much it wants to mean.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Skylark Tonight Lands the Interview
James Franco plays Dave Skylark, host of Skylark Tonight, a show that trades in celebrities’ personal lives. Rogen plays Aaron Rapaport, his producer. The broadcast gets interrupted by news reports about North Korea and its nuclear weapons. Later, at a celebration for the show’s 1,000th episode, another producer tells Rapaport the show is not real news. That stings.
Then Kim turns out to be a fan. Rapaport arranges the interview. CIA Agent Lacey, played by Lizzy Caplan, asks the pair to kill Kim with a transdermal strip of ricin, delivered by handshake.
Ricin, a Drone, and a Siberian Tiger
Randall Park plays Kim, credited as “President Kim.” Diana Bang is Sook-yin Park, the chief propagandist. Officers Koh and Yu meet the Americans at the palace and distrust them at once.
The mechanics go exactly where you expect:
- Koh finds the strip and chews it, thinking it is gum.
- Lacey airdrops two more strips by drone.
- Rapaport hides the container in his rectum after evading a Siberian tiger.
- Security catches him and strips him naked.
- Koh suffers a seizure and diarrhea from the ricin poisoning, accidentally shooting Yu before dying.
Robbie, a Siberian tiger from the former Bowmanville Zoo, plays the animal that chases Rapaport.
Basketball, a Tank, and a Guilt-Ridden Host
The best stretch is Skylark and Kim together. Kim convinces Skylark that he is misunderstood as a cruel dictator and a failed administrator, then takes him through a day of basketball, a personal tank and partying with escorts. Park plays the dictator as needy rather than monstrous, and the film draws much of its tension from that.
Skylark discards a strip the next morning, sick with guilt. The cameos land hard too — Eminem, Rob Lowe and Bill Maher among them.
The Interview wants the assassination plot and the friendship to carry equal weight, and they do not. The ricin jokes are the film’s engine; the bonding is the film’s excuse. Rogen and Goldberg keep reaching for a satirical point and settle for a gag.
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