Why We Never Needed The Interview

And so the holiday weekend comes to a close, and I am still not sure who the much debated Rogen/Franco comedy vehicle, The Interview was ultimately made for. While I found myself indirectly swept up into the controversy surrounding the film in the weeks pre-release, a part of me was probably akin to so many others, only curious on some minute, morbid level. And after having seen it, the word "sucker" does come to mind, even if evidence has been abundantly clear that the devastating attack on Sony Studios' servers was a very real thing. Suspicion notwithstanding, what the world stage has witnessed yet again via this film, is that there is no accounting for ego, nor taste when regarding any kind of comedy. And what I witnessed via the near two-hours of excruciating dearth of laughs, was that pandering is indeed alive and well. And that no amount of marketing and bad press can wash away cheap, myopic art.

There is a part of me that is now morbidly curious about how studios like Sony intend to survive into an already uncertain future for film when their green lights tend to lean on the cheapness of their bottom line. This is a film that starts in one place, flirts with change, only to swing right back to where it begins. It's bad enough that we are host to a story where noone actually learns anything, but that the so-called complication turns out to be exactly as advertised, rendering the whole affair meaningless. If this is what it takes to get the public on board with your films, I suppose its clear that management has virtually no faith left in the viewer to chart new courses.

Is it a complete suckers game though? I mean, one should consider not merely North Korea in regards to an aggressively changing world. There is certainly room for it. This just feels like a dated, underthought, and overall cheap means of milking that issue in an era where one might see this approach to be a little..dated. Something smarter could have been composed here. But Rogen and Evan Goldberg, took the easy road, and cranked out something both regressive, and ultimately underwhelming. It's a real shame considering Randall Park, and Diana Bang in the film. They deserve much better considering their work in this. Which brings full circle that the film feels like a rush job that only serves its stars, and much less the world at large. Much like the campaign, the whole thing feels cheap in a way only comedic superstars could conjure with their desperate attempts to feel topical, and their combined egoes squatting out half-baked product. Their Adam Sandler fate, at least to me, feels complete.


There's truly nothing new, let alone interesting here. Move along.