Monumentally stupid and yet quite funny, The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco. James Franco is Dave Skylark, the Jerry Springer-like star of a gotcha style tabloid show and Rogen is Aaron Rapaport, his producer/sidekick. Rapaport is fed up with the slimy, low class style of the show and is bent on leaving for hard hitting journalism. He is ripe for a change.

When Skylark discovers that North Korean President Kim Jong Un (Randall Park), is a big fan, he approaches Rapaport to propose interviewing the leader. When the communist dictator happily agrees, the CIA approaches them with a brilliant idea: lets have the idiots assassinate him. Since Skylark is a notorious lecher they send in a rather exposed CIA operative, Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan), to literally titillate him into complying. He succumbs and we have a movie.

Surprisingly, The Interview is quite funny and wonderfully reminiscent. Watching Interview is like finally seeing the sequel to Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd‘s Spies Like Us. I only wish they’d added a scene with the two Saturday Night Live superstars to add a cherry to the otherwise tasty idiocy.

The chemistry between the guys, Franco and Rogen, is classic and they’re like a marijuana hazed, and modern, version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: great friends, but we’re always waiting for “another fine mess.” There is definitely love between the two in this classic comic bromance and I love it.

With all of the silliness it’s surprising that the directors, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, worked so hard to make Kim Jong Un and Agent Lacey such good characters. Much of the credit goes to Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan of course. Park brought a wonderful crazed humanity to his role and when he switches from loveable to insane, it’s startling. He was endearing as the good guy and scary as the bad one.

Caplan too was quite good. She brought a weird charm to her role as a recruiter for assassination. She could have phoned this one in and gotten away with it, but instead made a little magic. She was strangely likeable even in the strangest roles. I’ve liked her since her quirky True Blood and New Girl characters and would love to see her bring a little of that oddness to romantic comedy.

The Interview is, by no means, a brilliant break out comedy, but it is fun to watch with some rather good characters working hard to make the film fun. Congratulations to Sony for following through and making this movie so easy to access. You can find this one everywhere on the internet, but checkout out The Interview Website.

Rating: 3 Stars out of 5 and no reason to see it at the theater.