The Interview 2014

Christy Lemire, ChristyLemire.com: This is what all the fuss was about? Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: What's wrong with The Interview is that it doesn't know how to be the singeing comedy it wants. Read more

Sara Stewart, New York Post: Hate to say it, but this film ain't half the satire it could have been. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Maybe you will love The Interview - if you can ever see the movie - as much as some people hate or fear it. But if you're hoping for any cogent political satire here, then the joke's on you. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: About as funny as a communist food shortage, and just as protracted. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, AV Club: Much of the film is devoted to the hit-and-miss (but strangely moving) riffing between the leading men. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Everyone here is in way over his or her head. Read more

Joe McGovern, Entertainment Weekly: A dangerous comedy about a dangerous regime shouldn't be safe for suburban dads. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: The Interview has the comic batting average of a mediocre-to-average Saturday Night Live sketch ... Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: Characterizing it as satire elevates the creative execution of the film's very silly faux assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un far beyond what it merits. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Like their affable, ignorant characters, Rogen and Franco seem in way over their heads with "The Interview." Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: That something so carefully slapdash and happily juvenile actually resulted in cyber-sabotage and threats of violence is, in itself, an enormous kind of joke. Too bad it's the biggest one here. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: In their third film together, Franco and Rogen have a terrific banter and an underlay of affection. This kind of rapport is rare. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Its lesson is that American pop culture is inescapable, our great achievement and most popular export, the weapon we wield abroad and the glue trap we struggle with at home. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: The film is not a dangerous weapon, or a tool for anti-Korean propaganda. It does kill, but with comedy. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: It's stupid. It's in bad taste. It impossible. I know all that. But Rogen's instinct to try anything for giggles and sticking it to dictatorial assholes is worth fighting for. Screw Kim if he can't take a joke. Read more

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: Imagine "Harold and Kumar Go to North Korea," or "Bill and Ted's Excellent North Korean Adventure" or even "The Road to Pyongyang" starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. You get the idea. Read more

Aisha Harris, Slate: If you like your dictator mockery served on a sharper, smarter dish, you should probably just do what everyone else seems to be doing, and rewatch Team America: World Police. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: "The Interview" struggles to really illuminate anything about the stranger-than-fiction Orwellian nightmare that is North Korea, but its attempt is admirable. It deserves to be seen. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: There's a whip-smart, pointed comedy in "The Interview." Unfortunately it's buried in there. Really deep. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Bluntly funny and ever-so-slightly sweet. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Te best satire provokes and even outrages, and Rogen, Franco and Goldberg certainly succeed on that score. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: While The Interview never slacks in its mission to tell jokes, it's such a messy and meandering movie that it never quite lands as a satire of politics or the media or anything else. Read more

David Ehrlich, Time Out: The Interview confirms Rogen as the most ambitious mainstream comedian in Hollywood. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The Interview fails to live up to the hype, floundering as a rowdy comedy as it grows duller by the minute. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: Offers a few moments of casual brilliance but otherwise trips itself up in the threads of its contrived absurdity. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's certainly smutty-and infantile. Maybe half the jokes miss. But it is a truly savage work. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The remarkably dismal quality is emblematic of the mind-set that brought the movie, and its attendant crises, into being. Read more