PAUL – The Review

PAUL is the third pairing of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the British comic actors best known for SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ, but it’s the first film they’ve made without their collaborator Edgar Wright, who wrote and directed those earlier films. PAUL is a spoof aimed at fanboys who’ve memorized every word and scene from STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, ALIENS, and all the other sci-fi staples of the past three decades. The plot is mostly an R-rated riff on E.T.,centering on illustrator Graham Willy (Simon Pegg), and sci-fi writer Clive Gollings (Nick Frost), two geeks from England who are in San Diego for Comic-Con, where the film opens. Afterwards, they jump aboard their rented RV for a road trip to see UFO hot spots from Nevada’s Area 51 to Roswell, New Mexico. On the highway, they see a car spin out of control and a slacker, dope-smoking alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) hops out of the wreck and asks the two to give him a ride to his mothership. Their journey quickly finds trouble when the trio are hotly pursued by secret service agents who want to return the little alien to the top-secret military base where he’s been under their control for 60 years. Leading the hunt is seriously uptight Fed Lorenzo Zoil (Jason Bateman) and his two incompetent rookie underlings Haggard (Bill Hader) and O’Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio). Paul, Graeme and Clive hide out in a trailer park, where they meet Ruth (Kristen Wiig), the daughter of a Bible-thumper who they hilariously teach to cuss

PAUL is a very clever film that throws out a lot of gags; in-jokes, movie jokes, sex jokes, drug jokes, and most of the attempts at humor work. Paul looks like an amalgam of every other extraterrestrial from film and literature from the past 50 years and there’s a reason for that; he claims that his likeness was marketed via movies and literature in order to get people used to his image, should there ever be an actual alien invasion (turns out he’s even Steven Spielberg’s consultant, leading to a hilarious voice cameo from the director) . There’s no avoiding the fact that PAUL is pretty much a one-trick-pony of a movie, the gag being that this little green spaceman is a foul-mouthed pothead but it’s still 100 minutes of undeniable fun. PAUL is a bit aimless and the story’s very predictable in that it’s obvious where it’s going but it takes a very funny road getting there and most of the jokes do work so I have to recommend it.

4 of 5 Stars