The Interview

 THE INTERVIEW

Directors : Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen

Year : 2015

Genre : Comedy

Rating : **

So much has been said about Seth Rogen and Evan Goldbergs' highly controversial comedy 'The Interview' already that it is completely pointless me even trying to discuss it's inflammatory content in depth without repeating the words of thousands of others. The film, which tells the story about an attempted assassination of Kim Jong Un, sparked global uproar and almost instigated war between America and the Koreans. It's distributors Sony Pictures was forced to pull the film from theaters due to threats of terrorist violence and some of Hollywoods biggest names came out to defend the movie as a matter of freedom of speech. Eventually after a huge amount of pressure from both the movie world and the audience, Sony would thankfully change it's mind and 'The Interview' was finally released to an angry but ultimately grateful general public. So when all is said and done does 'The Interview' echo the controversy surrounding it's supposedly dangerous subject matter and live up to it's incendiary hype? The answer is, sadly, no.

Despite the reports about nationwide anger aimed towards it, apart from a few choice scenes, 'The Interview' contains very little in the way of political satire or anything resembling a social statement about Kim Jong Un or the North Korean government. In fact, apart from an odd moment here and there, 'The Interview' bears little difference to any other Seth Rogen comedy. The language is as crude and as rude as you would expect, the female characters all seen as nothing but sexual objects and the humour mostly revolves around bodily functions and how many times the various characters (including Un himself) can say the 'F word' in a sentence. There are times that 'The Interview' promises to be a scabrous but eye-opening attack on the injustice and tyranny of North Korea, in the same way that 'Borat' uncovered the underlying racism and prejudice rife in todays United States. However, Rogen and Goldberg fails to the make the most of the ideologies they have lying on a plate in front of them and instead resort to the same tired conventions they have used in their movies time and time and time again. Yes, 'The Interview' works as a  typical run of the mill comedy but as hard-hitting satire, not so much.

After watching banned movies like 'A Clockwork Orange', 'The Human Centipede Part 2' and 'Cannibal Holocaust', it is blatantly obvious to me for what reasons they were pulled from cinematic release. After watching 'The Interview', I found myself asking, after all the talk of potential war and it's aftermath, what was all the fuss about?