Paul

Paul

            I was in the mood for a comedy, despite a number more ‘worthwhile’ films coming out this weekend.  I’m a big fan of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movies (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz).  I can’t say their films are works of great art, but I admire the creativity of comedic teams doing their own thing and finding success.  Paul is a chance for this team to go mainstream and they bring us a cute, if R-rated, story of an E.T. style alien teaming up for a road trip across the Southwest.

            The premise of the movie entails Graeme and Clive (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) two comic book fanboys from England, who come to America to visit all the mysterious UFO sites in the Southwest (after attending the world famous San Diego Comic Con).  They accidentally stumble across an Alien named Paul (Seth Rogen), who arrived 60 years earlier and has been living at a nearby air force base acting as a consultant for the US government.  Paul had come to the realization that he is not a ‘guest’ on planet Earth, rather a prisoner and is seeking to escape.  He runs across Graeme and Clive during their RV tour of the Southwest.

            Any movie that involves Fanboy geeks already has built in laughs.  They are truly one of the few categories of people where it is totally acceptable to mock and laugh outright.  Give the Fanboys a British twist and you have comedy gold.  Being a recovering Fanboy  (some would say I fall off the wagon on a frequent basis), I feel I have authority in stating that the movie captures the essence of comic book fandom perfectly.  Each one of these characters seemed like people out of my past. 

            The movie is filled with lots of cameos (not just people, but places), with winks to the audience for the space movies they represent.  The movie knows only the uber-geeks in the audience will get the references and Fanboys love that fact  (note: references had to be pointed out to me [that’s my story and I’m sticking to it]).  This movie is filled with some fun comedic performances by a lot of modern day favorites.  Jason Bateman plays the straight man hilariously as Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil (say the name quickly and count how many times it takes until you get the joke), the government operative leading the chase to retrieve Paul.  Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio play the bungling rookie FBI agents, Haggard and O’Reilly.  They both give great comic performances, but Truglio’s expressions as an FBI agent who is also trying to desperately hide his own Fanboy excitements is truly memorable.

            Other supporting comic actors could have been played their generic side roles forgettably, but Jeffrey Tambor as the comic book writer Adam Shadowchild stole his scenes at the San Diego comic con.  Kristen Wig is fast becoming the love interest go-to actress in comedy movies.  She plays her role as the fundamentalist Christian who has had her world shaken by the existence of an alien with no apologies to any conservatives she might offend.  Once she realizes that everything she knows in life wasn’t true, her pendulum swings to the other extreme and Graeme and Clive do their best to calm her down.  Her funniest moments are her attempts at cursing.   It’s always vulgar, but never quite right.  The movie is rated-R only because of her cursing rants.  There is no nudity or violence that would justify a rating above PG.

            The cameos are too numerous to mention, but for the geeks out there, they’re lots of fun.

            Seth Rogen plays the voice of Paul and captures the hip slacker vibe the movie was going for in the alien.  The animation of Paul is good, but not great.  I felt the movie went for the obvious laughs (and laugh I did), but given the concept it could have been much better.  It felt a little formulaic for the innovative and creative talents of Pegg and Frost.  Still, I must confess that Graeme and Clive sucked me in and I felt their Fanboy giddiness right along with them as they saw and met things that were every nerd’s comic book ultimate fantasy.  One of the film’s funniest running gags was the two of them constantly trying to convince everyone they weren’t gay.

            This movie is a lot of fun and contains the right amount of laughs for a Saturday matinee.  If it weren’t for Kristen Wigs hilarious, but extreme cursing, I would almost recommend this as a movie suitable for the whole family.  I wonder why the producers would limit their audience with an R-rating when mostly teens and pre-teens would find this movie appealing.  I guess they pay people to make those decisions.  I’m just a blogger.  This movie is good fun, but nothing great.

I rate this movie ** 1/2