Never has less of a film had more of an impact on the studio—and the nation—that produced it. (And never until now have I discussed a film that, as the situation currently stands, most people will never get to see.) “The Interview” isn’t just a film, of course. It’s a buddy comedy, with a slob aesthetic, that became the provocation for real-world events of shocking import; the quality of the thing wouldn’t seem to matter at this point. Yet the remarkably dismal quality is emblematic of the mind-set that brought the movie, and its attendant crises, into being.

The...