Given their first opportunity to watch Sony Pictures’ comedy The Interview on Wednesday after a massive cyber-attack nearly buried its release, viewers of the film described it as a chance to show their patriotism, as well as laugh.
The Sony Corp unit on Wednesday released The Interview, which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as agents assigned to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, through online video platforms such as Google’s YouTube and Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Video.
Sony had cancelled the movie’s release last week after leading US movie theatre chains said they would not run it because of security concerns. Hackers had previously broken into Sony’s computer systems, dumping hundreds of sensitive internal documents onto the internet and warning the company against showing the film.
But after widespread criticism, including from President Barack Obama and Hollywood leading man George Clooney, the studio opted for a limited release online on Wednesday and in independent movie theatres on Thursday.
! Free Speech.” actor Jonah Hill tweeted to his more than 4.5 million followers.
On Twitter, the movie’s release represented to some a test of civic duty as much as of comic sensibilities.
“Now that The Interview is available for viewing, would it be unpatriotic to take a pass?” David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Obama, said on Twitter.
As of 4.15pm EST, or more than three hours after the movie had been released online, 10,671 visitors to YouTube had given the film a “thumbs up” versus 822 with a “thumbs down.” The 989 reviewers on Google Play gave the movie an average of 4.7 stars out of 5.
Critical reviews of The Interview have been more mixed. On the website Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews from film critics, 54 per cent of 35 reviewers rated the movie a positive ”fresh.”
“Watching The Interview is torture from almost start to finish,” the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern said in his review.