By Emily Yoshida, The Verge
There was never any question this week that I would be spending part of my Christmas watching The Interview. When it was announced the morning that the film would get an online release at 10AM PT, without missing a beat I yelled to my mom in the next room (who I am currently visiting for the holidays) that we would have to cancel a day trip we had planned. Welcome to the hot take workshop: when a story snowballs to the proportion that the Sony hack and near-non-release of The Interview has, a certain kind of professional easily becomes a slave to the feeds and the whims of the individuals at the center of the story.
Security on standby during Sony Pictures’ release of ‘The Interview’ at the Plaza Theatre on, Christmas Day, December 25, 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. Sony hackers have been releasing stolen information and threatened attacks on theaters that screened the film. (Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)
But having now finally watched Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and screenwriter Dan Sterling’s film, I can confirm with confidence that the least important element of the story of The Interview is The Interview itself.
THE INTERVIEW WAS BOUND TO BE AN EMPEROR-HAS-NO-CLOTHES SITUATION
Of course, it was bound to be an emperor-has-no-clothes situation, much like the buildup to any other anticipated Hollywood blockbuster. We have endured a month of the equivalent of trailers and teaser trailers and previews of the teaser trailers courtesy of the Guardians of Peace and Michael Lynton, and as cynical moviegoers, we should be used to the idea that the product at the center of the storm can’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny and speculation. The Interview is substandard Apatovian bro-fare to the point of self-parody, full of the offensive Asian accents and dick-joke-a-minute banter one would expect; Lizzie Caplan’s CIA agent is a carbon copy of Cecily Strong’s “one-dimensional female character from a male driven comedy” as seen on SNL’s Weekend Update a couple weeks ago, down to the bangs and glasses.
It should not be a terribly revelatory statement to claim that a Seth Rogen / James Franco gross-out buddy romp is not a good film, but the story surrounding it has elevated it to the realm of hyperbole. After Sony’s initial decision to pull the film, the (completely righteous) indignation over the cowardice of the film industry quickly rendered the discourse in black-and-white. Even as many of us suspected the film was trash, we begrudgingly accepted that The Interview was the most important film of our era, and it was our duty as cineasts to defend and champion it as such. In the past week, the #IWouldGo hashtag sprung up in support of independent theaters screening the film. Either you were first in line for The Interview in whatever form it ended up screening, or you hated America.
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