Pun Salad

I took my low-courage stand against dictators and rented The Interview via the iTunes store. It was good filthy fun, with (as the MPAA puts it) "pervasive language, crude and sexual humor, nudity, some drug use and bloody violence." It kept me chuckling all the way through.

Given that the movie's premise has appeared ad nauseam all over the Internet during the past few weeks, you probably don't need this plot summary:

James Franco and Seth Rogen, respectively, play Dave Skylark (the dimwitted host of a trashy celebrity interview show) and Aaron Rapaport (his somewhat smarter producer). Stupid as he is, Dave has an uncanny gift for getting his interview subjects to open up on-air to reveal dark secrets. (Eminem: gay; Rob Lowe: bald.) It turns out that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is a fan, and (incredibly) Aaron makes the arrangements for the show to broadcast live from Pyongyang.

But the CIA takes an interest, and persuades Dave and Aaron to attempt to assassinate Kim with a surreptitious dose of ricin. What could go wrong? Everything, as it turns out.

I was impressed: there was nothing here to make a right-wing freedom-loving troglodyte like me toss his cookies. Kim makes an effort to appear human and ingratiate himself with Dave; this works, briefly, but only because Dave is a gullible idiot. The movie doesn't go into the dirty details of North Korean misery and repression, but (hey) it's a comedy, and I don't recall To Be Or Not To Be showing Auschwitz either.