THE INTERVIEW (ON DEMAND)

British director, Gabriel Range’s  award-winning 2006 “Death of a President” depicts the fictional assassination of George W. Bush, the forty-third President of the United States, on October 19, 2007 in Chicago; there was some intellectual umbrage; but nothing like the draconian outrage, internet-sabotage, ruckus of what we have witnessed over the past month revolving  around Seth Rogen’s “The Interview” focusing on a popular TV show host “Dave Skylark” (James Franco) and his producer “Aaron Rapaport” (Seth Rogen) hired by the C.I.A. to eliminate North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un, a demigod enamored with the magnetic “Dave”, granting him a prescript interview, in Pyongyang.

From the onset its silliness, scatological humor, inane innuendo panders to the “Hangover” , “This is the End”, “Knocked Up”, “Neighbors” audience; men forever cemented in immature “boyhood”; drugs, sex and alcohol informing their lifestyle; idiocy, a key ingredient in “The Interview”.

But a strange phenomena occurred during the bludgeoning lunacy; moments of hilarity, surprisingly entertaining, especially with the bonding of “Dave” and Kim ( Randall Park, a keen look-a-like for the real deal; pudgy-perfect in the role); Franco with jejune, naive prescience moves beyond annoyance and gifts Dave, likeability.

In the end, for all of its raunchiness, was “much ado about nothing” and would have appropriately faded without the media uproar and North Korea’s interference;  to paraphrase Mae West, “there is no such thing as bad publicity”;  “The Interview” is garnishing bales,  and eventual financial gain, in spades.

TWO STARS!!

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