TORONTO — By now, anyone not living under a rock in Pyongyang knows Sony Pictures has cancelled the Christmas Day release of the made-in-B.C. comedy The Interview following threats by hackers.
Co-directed by Vancouver natives Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the controversial comedy stars Rogen and James Franco in a plot to kill Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea.
The decision not to release The Interview has led to at least one cinema announcing it will instead screen Team America: World Police, the 2004 puppet feature that pokes fun at the leader of North Korea, and reportedly prompted New Regency to pull the plug on Gore Verbinski’s planned spy thriller Pyongyang (by Quebec’s Guy Delisle).
While many believe not releasing the film sets a dangerous precedent, others are wondering if Sony Pictures — and, by extension, the hackers — did movie-goers a favour.
Adrian Mack of Vancouver’s Georgia Straight saw The Interview and opined this week that it’s “too monumentally stupid for even the pettiest of dictatorships to really care about it.”
Mack said the hackers, self-identified as Guardians of Peace, “inadvertently chased the biggest bomb right out of the theatre.”
He wrote: “This is clearly anything but satire. Instead, The Interview revels in ignorance and brandishes its tastlessness like a divine right.
The Associated Press movie writer Jake Coyle, though, said The Interview “deserves to be seen.”
According to Coyle, “most who see The Interview will say to themselves: THIS is what prompted an international incident? There’s nothing scandalous about The Interview, unless you happen to believe Kim is a god who rides around on unicorns.”
BELOW: Watch the trailer for The Interview.
At TIME, Richard Corliss said The Interview fails to deliver “any cogent political satire” but said the real Kim Jong-un “might be flattered” if he saw the movie.
“Amid all the cartoon characterizations, the most complex and sympathetic — or at least pathetic — figure is Kim,” wrote Corliss, “played with alternating charm and menace by Randall Park.”
Corliss added: “In its parade of ribald gags and infantile preoccupation with body parts, not to mention a climactic decapitation, water-balloon style, The Interview displays all the mindless excesses that repressive regimes condemn in Hollywood movies. Which may be Rogen and Goldberg’s point — ‘See, here’s what they hate about us. And you’re gonna love it.'”
Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News summed it up this way: “Too bad dictators and terrorists don’t think they’re that funny, because The Interview is.”
The critic said the movie hits its marks and “every time it does skid into juvenile idiocy … it follows it with a stride or two toward uproarious meta-satire.”
Entertainment Weekly reviewer Joe McGovern disagreed.
“It’s a pity that the film is bereft of satiric zing, bludgeoning the laughs with a nonstop sledgehammer of bro humour,” he wrote. “The farce lacks finesse, which is especially true of Franco’s assaulting, unspontaneous performance. Gesturing madly with every move, the actor doesn’t deliver a single line straight.”
Across the pond at The Guardian, Jordan Hoffman described The Interview as a “very amusing, very imbecilic film.”
“Rarely outside the playground has there been this much giddy conversation about the digestion process. Sphincters, buttocks and all that navigate these byways should get third billing next to Seth Rogen and James Franco in this dirty Hope and Crosby-style film about assassinating Kim Jong-un,” Hoffman wrote.
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