"The Interview": what's the problem?

Netflix now has The Interview available for streaming. I just watched it. Here are my thoughts.

Embarrassing to watch in some ways. Reminds me of Dumb & Dumber. Really stupid stuff. But it has some outstanding moments and is technically pretty damn awesome. Loved the opening scene with the cute little NK schoolgirl singing the praises of her “God,” followed by the mock nuking of the USA.

Hard to believe how some people could get so fucking upset by a movie.

In so many ways, it’s the Jerry Lewis or Abbot & Costello flick of the 2010’s. Fun, but probably doesn’t deserve to be in the all-time Top One Hundred. If it wasn’t for the controversy, it would be in the VHS/DVD bargain bins in two weeks. Oh, wait – it already is.

If anyone comes up to you now and recites the following quotes, you will know where they came from:

James Franco:

Don’t we have a couple threads discussing it already?

Not after it was widely released. Remember – in December, Sony decided to deep-six the film because they were afraid of North Korea’s missiles. The story has flip-flopped several times since then. The film’s content has been less important than the presentation of it. Now let’s talk about the content.

I personally thought the movie was a softball compared to some of the real stuff we know about North Korea. There were no death camps in the movie. No one got fed to dogs. No one’s entire family was thrown in prison because of a single person speaking out.

If there was anything that generated real outrage I would imagine it would have to have been the depiction of Jong-Un as an effeminate Katy Perry fan. Plus he pees and poops. It’s a caricature of a man who is considered a god in his own country. And I see how that could be insulting. But if Jong-Un is at all into dick and fart jokes (and really, who isn’t?) I bet he’d laugh.

Well, there was also a “Seen It” Thread once the film was released.
I don’t personally care that a new Thread has been started, but if the mods decide a merge is called for then this is the Thread you’ll probably find your OP merged into.
I liked it well enough. Having the serious actor play the comic while the comic actor played the straight man actually worked out well and showcased both Franco and Rogen nicely. Franco’s character was a little too stupid considering the rest of the characters were grounded a little bit closer to reality.

The only thing I don’t like about Lizzy Caplan is that she hasn’t married me yet, but I figure if I keep seeing her movies it may still happen one day.

I really did love Randall Park as Kim Jong-un. I thought he was really funny and I look forward to seeing more work from him now that he’s getting noticed (there’s already a Thread about a new sitcom that he’s on called “Fresh Off the Boat”).

It wasn’t “some people” that got upset by it, it was one single specific person.

His had to be the breakout performance of the film. He managed to play Un both as a caricature and as a human. I was really impressed. And I thought the writing for the actual interview part of the film was surprisingly sharp given the rest of the movie. It really supported his performance in a good way.

The CEO of Sony?

I watched it on Netflix just for the novelty factor and it was actually funnier than I expected. Rogan and Franco are both very hit and miss (mostly miss), so I was pleasantly surprised.

The only thing that kind of pisses me off is that I paid a few bucks to watch it, and then it came available on Netflix a few days later. If I’d been paying attention, I probably would have known that, but no big. It was about what I expected: dumb, turn off the brain silly fun. And I’ll concur with the above that Randall Park was very good in that role.

Me, too, in spite of the fact he didn’t look much like the original beyond the royal haircut.

I paid to see it as well, but I was happy to see that the local discount theater picked it up the very same week as the small handful of first-run theaters had picked it up.

I paid $3.00 and saw it with a fairly sizeable audience. I’m glad I did it this way, it’s the kind of movie that plays better when you’re within a responsive audience. If I had paid to watch it online, then I would maybe have been miffed to see it come available for free so soon.

Really? These are the quotable lines?

If someone came up to me with those quotes I’d know who to avoid for the rest of the party.

The only quotable lines to me were this exchange, which I am doing from memory:

Franco: I thought you were my Sam to my Frodo, but you are really my Boromir!

Rogen: I don’t even know who that is!

Franco: That is such a Boromir thing to say!

Honey dicking, stank dick, etc. There were a few quotable moments. The movie was ok. I was expecting it to be a LOT harsher toward North Korea, so it was a bit disappointing to see them get off so easily. The movie didn’t depict just how awful the DPRK is. Otherwise it was funny.

I paid to watch it online and I don’t feel ripped off. I wish all movies would be released online at the same time as theatrical.

The only “problem” I’m aware of is just that you don’t really see too many movies come out about assassinating world leaders who are still alive.

Be rather difficult to assassinate one who’s dead.

Pretty easy to make a movie about it though.