I watched ‘The Interview’ — and survived!

The Interview is probably the only major studio movie that you’re obligated to watch on a pirated copy, because it never got a proper release from Sony Pictures, which chickened out from showing it in cinemas after getting its corporate files hacked — purportedly by North Korean cyberterrorists. It’s also probably the only Hollywood movie to ever spur a world leader to threaten fiery Armageddon if it saw release, which was apparently enough to spook Sony Pictures.

Either that, or this has all been an elaborate marketing ploy to make us believe this Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy is radically different or somehow more subversive than their usual efforts.

The Interview is not radically different or subversive, despite all the high-level attention it’s gotten, though it does shed the stoner jokes for a higher quotient of penis and butthole jokes. Is this a plus or a minus?

It’s actually quite funny, in a Rogen/Franco kind of way, meaning it features two dudes who, in a parallel universe, would probably be gay for each other, but who instead act like two hetero buds with a fondness for discussing each other’s balls. That’s Apatow Country, folks.

Rogen is Aaron Rapoport, TV producer for Skylark Tonight, a tabloid talk show hosted by unctuous Dave Skylark (Franco) that features celebrity reveals — like Rob Lowe admitting he’s secretly bald, or Eminem casually admitting he’s gay (just “follow the breadcrumb trail” of his lyrics, brah).

Aaron wants more “big league” news interviews, so when the two learn that Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a big fan of the Skylark show, they arrange a visit to Pyongyang. Naturally, the CIA gets involved — via Mean Girls’ Lizzy Caplan, who wants Dave to give the Korean dictator a deadly ricin handshake.

This prompts Dave to complain that the ricin poison would be too slow-acting. “This is a major television event! You don’t want to blow it with an off-screen death. In porno, we call this the money shot!”

So there you go. Television, assassination and porn: all require a money shot.

To be fair, there are semi-classic bits in The Interview (the scene where Aaron and Dave misunderstand the CIA mission to “take out” Kim Jong-un is a hoot: “‘Take out’? You mean… for drinks? To dinner?”) And Franco’s performance taps into new dimensions of cheesiness that were previously only hinted at.

But the movie is basically a vehicle to parade the usual concerns of screenwriters Rogen and Evan Goldberg — male bonding, male-female bonding, Ecstasy — in a topical environment. We are fed reports at the opening of North Korea’s threatening stance and scary outbursts, and a little Korean girl chirpily sings about Americans “drowning in their own blood and feces,” to underpin the mass brainwashing that goes on under leader Kim.

But another kind of mass brainwashing goes on in America, and The Interview slyly lampoons this as well, though it ultimately submits to other types of American brainwashing.

TV and Hollywood are the obvious targets of the film’s comedy, with Aaron and Dave just two celeb-obsessed boobs addicted to every passing Western trend. Watching the first half, you almost feel like it could pass for North Korean propaganda, detailing the decadence and corruption of American culture — specifically Los Angeles culture. But in the usual way of Hollywood films (see: Bill Murray in Stripes, or almost every Tom Cruise movie), our heroes start out shallow and reckless, and end up becoming adults by the finale. Or something like adults.

Because Franco and Rogen are allowed to wallow in a playground of immaturity and retarded sexual development onscreen, they can safely peddle what has become known, in modern currency, as comedy. It’s a man-child wilderness with shades of California self-awareness and therapy (which is why these dudes are always hugging it out, opening up), which is probably not so different from the reality of being a male Hollywood star.

At least this is how I generously perceive the intentions of The Interview. From North Korea’s perspective, it might just offer further proof that Americans are decadent devils and fools. So why isn’t Kim Jong-un, a rabid film fan, flooding his own cinemas with copies of The Interview and forcing his people to see it to learn how “bad” America really is?

Well, it could be that final scene, where the supreme leader (played by Veep’s Randall Park) gets his head blown to smithereens in fiery slow motion. Excessive, yes; but what, in a Rogen/Franco comedy, isn’t excessive?

Park does the subversive trick of making us actually like Kim Jong-un — playing him as a blubbery playboy who likes Katy Perry and margaritas and blowing up things with his tank — until the inevitable part where he turns nasty, threatening to start a nuclear war. Our heroes — or Skylark, at least — slowly learn that Kim’s pretense of a well-fed country is a sham, and he turns his TV interview into a riff on Frost/Nixon, throwing softballs before hitting Kim with tough questions about starving his own people.

It could have ended there — Kim revealed as a liar on international TV, and exposed before his own people. But this is Hollywood: you have to end things with a bang.

What doesn’t work in The Interview is the insufficient motivation for Franco and Rogen going along with plans to assassinate Kim in the first place. Is it just because they want to bed hot CIA agent Kaplan? Are they patriots? Are they just stupid? Though it’s not the kind of movie that rewards deep analysis, what we’re left with is a script that, in the end, panders to a jingoistic, pro-American stance, sanctioning assassination — because, after all, those are “the bad guys,” right? — and packaging it in a plot that’s about as politically subtle as Rambo. So this is why you don’t want to analyze this stuff too deeply.

As far as taking the Rogen/Franco comedy brand to new levels, it’s a little less funny than 2013’s This is the End, but miles funnier than, say, Your Highness.

But in the end, The Interview is as Rogen has maintained all along — just a comedy, meant for entertainment — and it’s still unclear whether Kim Jong-un’s gambit of giving it so much attention has benefited him, Rogen, or Sony Pictures — which reportedly earned $31 million so far from online downloads and on-demand viewing. Certainly the video pirates are benefiting.