The Interview: Have we all, Obama too, been getting worked up about a nullity?

No one ever thought ‘The Interview’ would be high art, but its lows are unwittingly epic, says ‘The Wall Street Journal’s’ excellent film critic Joe Morgenstern.

The film is “infantile”, he told the BBC on Monday, “it should never have been made”. Why, for instance, name the leader of North Korea. His head, by the way, explodes at the end of the film.

Good heavens. So have we all (including President Obama) been getting worked up about a nullity? A complete and utter offence to the great art of cinema rather than a real cracker of a free speech bomb?

Well, of course.

One would hardly have expected differently from a cartoonish presentation that is in such bad taste it kills off a real living person onscreen.

So what if he is Kim Jong-Un, the dictatorial leader of North Korea?

Had they tried the same storyline with an American president, a British or Indian prime minister, they wouldn’t have used a real name or person.

Unsurprisingly, the North Koreans weren’t amused. And they don’t have that great a sense of humour anyway.

That said, the principle of the thing does count. If only we were applying it to a more suitable subject though.