The Interview (2014)

Some movies are so gloriously stupid that they get written, green-lit, made, and released to the public and somehow the world is better for it.
Anything Will Farrell has done fits, arguably “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), along with “Kung Pow” (2002) and this, “The Interview” (2014).
Now, this is a very special, carefully balanced category. It’s not just that the movie was stupid, like anything from Adam Sandler or four of the five “Transformers” commercials. 
These magnificent pieces of cinematic crap have transcended their roots and become a part of our cultural heritage in a way that they absolutely don’t deserve, but that are now burned into our collective retinas. Often for memes.

You probably remember “The Interview” as that movie that was “hacked” and “leaked” from Sony, because frankly, there’s no way they could have sent this to theaters with any hopes of a financially successful opening weekend. While there may have been some real leakage going on, I’m convinced this was actually part of a very impressive publicity stunt.

Talk show-host Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his best friend/producer Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogan) were flying high on their continued successful ratings, but found themselves in a lurch when they realized that the interviews they were doing were basically media fluff and not hard-hitting journalism. Through inexplicable means, they decided they should interview Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea, to get the interview of a lifetime that no other journalist could ever get. The CIA then contacted them to discuss turning their interview into an assassination attempt with plausible deniability.
Dave, being a terminally stupid pretty-boy, was convinced that President Kim couldn’t possibly have been as bad as the media portrayed him to be, and thus decided to befriend the dictator during their short visit to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
Kim (Randall Park) had a flair for Katy Perry music and margaritas, because why not. Who knows, maybe the real Kim does too. 

That’s about as there is for me to say about the plot: it’s a movie about two guys failing upwards to a wildly important assassination when, by all means, they should have died immediately.

There was some gross-out humor (a bunch, actually), and lots of Dave and Aaron shouting expletives at each other, because it was a Seth Rogan movie. A two-second scene had a collection of topless women in it.
Pleasantly, there were also a few scenes of Air Force assets and troops behaving and functioning like they’re supposed to - no unnecessary shenanigans! I’m sure the USAF’s public affairs office in Hollywood had something to do with that, but compared to the stupidity of the troops in “Transformers,” this stuff was pretty much perfect.

This movie did that thing where actors referenced real-life pop-culture, yet no one noticed that they looked exactly like actors that would have existed in other coexisting media.
But considering the sheer bonkers-ness of this movie, I’ll give it a pass. I don’t think they could have reached the same level of shenanigans by making Kim love a made-up pop star, so it helped propel the story instead of detract.

There wasn’t much in the way of special effects to see, though there were some intriguing set pieces of the brutalist architecture that the DPRK is known for, so that’s cool for whomever was doing the location scouting.

The music was good. “Firework” by Katy Perry played at one point, along with a very slow remix that fit the climax scene magnificently.

I do think it’s worthy to note that I usually hate movies with or directed by Seth Rogan, so I was surprised at how much I liked this.
I saw it when it first “leaked,” then again this past weekend, and I laughed both times. I probably would have loved to see it in theaters, so I’m giving it 4-Claws because it’s my site and I love these stupidly-perfect movies.
Gauge that rating as you see fit.