You won’t miss much
Flick a Kim-witted dud
THE INTERVIEW ★★ Pyong-yawn! Running time: 111 min. Rated R (language, nudity, violence).
‘YOU know what’s more destructive than a nuclear bomb? Words,” North Korean leader Kim Jongun (Randall Park) says, with a tear in his eye, in “The Interview.” It’s a prophetic line in this otherwise limp comedy, which has stirred up a world of controversy it doesn’t earn.
As you may have heard, the plot sees Seth Rogen and James Franco playing bumbling Americans contracted by the CIA to assassinate Kim. The money shot — in which the leader is blown to bits while escaping on his helicopter — is intact, though downplayed from its original, gorier version, as revealed in hacked emails between codirector and writer Rogen (with Evan Goldberg) and Sony.
Franco plays Dave Skylark, the preening host of a talk show famous for its viral celebrity moments (as the film begins, Eminem is remarking offhandedly to Dave that obviously he’s gay). Dave’s best friend and producer, Aaron (Rogen), is thrilled with their success but craves more serious subject matter. When the North Korean leader is revealed to be a fan of their show, they ask him to come on — and get an invite to do the gig in Pyongyang in response.
Before they can go, they’re contacted by a CIA agent (Lizzie Caplan) who informs them they’re being enlisted to kill Kim with a deadly strip of ricin contained in a handshake. Watching dimwitted Dave practice the poison handoff is amusing; less so Aaron’s rant about how the agent is a “honeypot,” using her looks to reel them in.
Park (“Veep”), however, gives a go-for-broke performance as Kim, who greets Dave and Aaron as a friendly, open guy who just wants to drink margaritas and listen to Katy Perry.
Starstruck Dave, channeling Dennis Rodman’s recent trip to the country, wants to ditch the CIA operation. Aaron reminds him, in one of the film’s stabs at justifying its hotbutton status, how many people in North Korea are starving, in concentration camps or both.
The film hits its stride, briefly, while skewering the bizarre mythology that has always surrounded this country’s leaders. “He does not have a butthole,” a North Korean officer solemnly assures them of Kim. “He has no need for one.”
Aaron, who hits it off with the leader’s foxy adviser (Diana Bang), ends up beside her in a bloody controlroom gunfight during Dave’s interview. It leads into the film’s hamhanded conclusion, including the scene that may or may not have incited North Korea’s hacker wrath, and jettisons all attempts at wit. The helicopter scene would be forgettable if not for the offense it’s generated.
As Franco’s Skylark is fond of saying, “Haters gonna hate, and ain’ters gonna ain’t.”
Hate to say it, but this film ain’t half the satire it could have been.