Cinema 2011 #18: Paul

Spaced: The Final Frontier. That’s sort of the impression you leave with after spending 104 minutes in the presence of Paul, a foul-mouthed extraterrestrial trying to make his way home. In this, the latest vehicle from BFFs turned British Film Favourites Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the titular alien may steal the show, but the heart of the film lies in Pegg and Frost’s exploration of friendship. Certainly a road they’ve tread before, be it slipping away from zombies or packing heat at a village fete. But this time round it’s a road movie. A sci-fi road movie. And the boys have also penned the script themselves, and are without Edgar Wright, their erstwhile directing sidekick, busy carving a niche for himself as Hollywood’s go-to geek.

The story revolves around Graeme and Clive, two British Nerds visiting San Diego’s Comic Con and driving through the states to visit all the major hot spots of UFO activity. Their holiday is a Poindexter’s paradise, as they soak up the alien Americana in desert valleys and dodgy diners. Then they stumble upon Paul, a real life little green man trying to make his way home, and after some cajoling agree to help him hide from the fuzz - a duo of gormless agents, one pretty ruthless one, and one very familiar puppet master. There’ll be car chases, soft-core drug use, girls, beers, nudity and more movie references than you can keep track off. And one pretty epic cameo. 

Perhaps recognisant of their growing global clout at the cinema, Paul finds the British stars joined by some of the heaviest hitters of the US comedy scene, namely Messrs Rogen, Bateman, Hader and Mlle Wiig. In Seth Rogen, voicing the CGI headliner, Pegg and Frost let loose with tasteless dexterity and frequently hilarious results. Rogen is clearly game, and his hoarse tones lend well to Paul slacker traits, and it’s nice to hear him not phoning it in to help this E.T. phone home after the disaster that was The Green Hornet. Jason Bateman rightly plays it straighter then an abductee after an anal probe, and SNL alumnus Kristen Wiig show’s how to fill a swear jar as a reformed-Christian with a scandalous recital of cursing, rivaled only by hardened sailors or inner-city school kids.

The film, however, never truly takes off and in many ways fails to hit the comedic cosmos one would hope for. The first problem is that it takes far too long to get going, with a prolonged preamble around Comic Con merely gilding the Triffid – we get it, they speak Klingon, they’re geeks! Furthermore, the film is easily more accessible than either of Frost/Pegg’s previous outings, ditching the violent edginess of Shaun and action-packed set pieces of Fuzz for, ironically, a more straight-laced farce, albeit of a CGI alien. But this is not necessarily an improvement, making the film simpler, yes, but in a sense lazier (small bladder jokes get old, quickly).

Credit where its due though, Paul’s design and execution are well rendered, and you will promptly forget to stop thinking about how that’s a computerised character cussing up there on the screen. The cast is uniformly good, with Frost and Pegg showing a genuine chemistry that has helped them develop into a Cook/Moore combo of our generation. And the script is tightly packed with nods to every major sci-fi film of the past 40 years, with cues thrown into the soundtrack for good measure. So while it may fail to abduct your interest wholly, you won’t leave wishing the men in black had flashed your memory clean either.

3 Likes.