Everyone has heard that The Interview, the Sony Pictures comedy at the center of this month’s North Korea cyberattack news, is supposed to be terrible. But goofy comedies are often panned by critics, and in any case there’s perhaps some appeal to seeing a movie that has so been in the news.
Unfortunately for Sony, now that it has allowed the film to be streamed online, people are actually watching it, and what they are seeing is worse even than the already rock-bottom expectations. It’s hard to imagine that anything could possibly sum that up better than this six-second clip from the film, uploaded by BuzzFeed foreign editor Miriam Elder:
Here’s what’s happening in the clip, as best I can tell: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, portrayed by Korean-American actor Randall Park, is explaining to the famous American TV host who has come to interview him, portrayed by James Franco, that he does indeed “pee and poo.” He adds, “I have a butthole.”
While Kim is thought to speak English, it’s difficult to imagine him ever discussing his “pee and poo.”
More to the point, it’s difficult to imagine how or why anyone at Sony Pictures could think that this scene would be remotely funny, or even amusing. There’s not even really a joke here. Yet, somehow, dozens of people participated in this very expensive project, in which millions of dollars were spent and an international incident sparked — if unintentionally — so that movie-goers could hear an American-accented Kim Jong Un explain that he does in fact “poo.”
Amazingly, The Interview is a full one hour and 52 minutes, meaning that it is as long as watching this clip 1,120 consecutive times. It’s one way to spend the holidays, I suppose.
