Believe it or not, I DO sometimes see first run movies, notwithstanding the hassles of going out, the annoying commercials, the occasionally obnoxious yokels in the audience, and the sticker shock (slightly ameliorated by the occasional senior ‘discount’). So, last night, we trundled off in the rain to see Paul, the new comedy written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and directed by Greg Mottola.
Paul , essentially, is a satirical homage to science fiction movies in general and those about aliens (of the E.T. variety and otherwise) in particular. If you are not a fan of this genre, don’t despair. Paul is also a buddy film/bromance, a road movie and a chase film. It works pretty well on all these levels. It is a charming and funny movie.
The warm, congenial relationship between the protagonist best-buddies Clive (Frost), writer of fantasy comics and Graeme (Pegg) his illustrator, is at the core. These two blokes start the film wandering about at the annual Comic-Con convention in SoCal, like two kids in a candy shop, immediately establishing their geekdom and likeability. This is their glorious first visit to the US, and immediately following Comic-com they’re off in an RV to visit sacred shrines of UFO mystery, including the ultra-secret Area 51 in Nevada and other iconic sites along nearby highway 375, the so-called “Extraterrestrial Highway”. Soon they run into Paul, a wisecracking ET-like alien, on the lam from the authorities. Paul, it turns out, crash landed here 40 years ago, and has been in captivity ever since, getting poked, prodded and interrogated. Along the way, he has picked up not only our lingo, but our vices as well: drinking smoking, cursing, etc. As voiced by Seth Rogen, Paul is vulgar, amusing and wise. He is also dangerous to be around because The Man, personified by a man in black (Agent Zoil, played by Jason Bateman) and by the mysterious “Big Guy” (not a man at all), wants him back dead or alive, before the public finds out. So the chase is on.
Along the way, fun is poked at fundamentalists, red necks, kitsch culture, sci-fi geeks, and other easy targets – but with such a light touch and cleverness that it feels fresh. The director, Greg Mottola, keeps things moving, so the action and the jokes never bog down. Also amusing are numerous affectionate references to other movies of the genre, from Star Wars to Aliens to Close Encounters; some of these references were laugh-out-loud funny.
(Spoiler Alert: if you haven’t seen the trailer for this movie yet - don’t: one of the funniest moments in Paul is previewed there, and you’ll enjoy it much more in context.)
Ultimately though, what keeps us interested is the honesty of the characters and their interactions, not just the friendship between Clive and Graeme, but with the supporting roles as well. Especially strong are Blythe Danner, as a woman whose life was irretrievably altered by Paul’s arrival forty years ago; and Kristen Wiig as a Christian woman whose fundamentalist world view is challenged, to say the least, by the very existence of Paul. If God created man in his own image, what does this alien represent? While Wiig’s predicament is played for laughs, she herself is not a cardboard cutout, but someone with whom we can empathize. There's a great early scene in which a hotel bellhop (Nelson Ascencio)implicates a very different concern at the mention of aliens. And Jason Bateman is fun to watch as the menacing heavy here, a very different role for him.
By the way, Paul has a pretty decent comedic pedigree. You may have seen Pegg and Frost before in two previous funny movies: Shawn of the Dead (2004) a must-see, classic take on zombie movies, and Hot Fuzz (2007) a wild satire on the action/cop genre. Meanwhile, director Mottola has a prior good film on his resume as well: Superbad (2007), featuring the unforgettable “McLovin”; as well as the less satisfactory Adventureland (2009), (see my review of this turkey).
In theaters now.
Want to read more about this film or see other reviews? Go to Rotten Tomatoes.
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