Paul

There seems to be a trend in the movies I see lately. The ones I think are going to be total crap turn out to be pretty enjoyable. The ones I am super excited about turn out to be steaming, tightly coiled pieces of disappointment. Paul is a part of this latter category.

Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) are best friends. They are also extreme nerds. And they are British, but they spend the entire time in America (A tried and true comedy technique, take the subject out of their familiar environment). Clive is an aspiring science fiction writer and Graeme (pronounced Graham for everyone who studied actual English) is his artist. They decide to live their dream of attending a UFO/comic-con convention and then renting an R/V together and seeing America's greatest alien spots. After being repeatedly mistaken for a gay couple (hilarious) and on their way to Area 51, a black sedan crashes off the road in front of their R/V. When investigating the craft they find Paul (Seth Rogen) a little green foul-mouthed alien who needs their help in getting back home. Clive and Graeme decide to help him out but are pursued by Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) and The Big Guy (Sigourney Weaver) who are shooting to kill. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Let's start this off by saying that this is a brilliant concept. I fell in love with it. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost work so well together, and they are the best parts of the film. Consistently funny (Pegg's character mostly, Frost isn't given much of a vehicle) and play well with an imaginary alien. Now we get to the rest of the cast. Jason Bateman is fine, as he always is, but there isn't much depth to his character and he isn't much of a tough guy. Seth Rogen lends all of his charm and wit to the character of Paul (HINT: this isn't a compliment). I am tired of the stereotype that Seth Rogen is funny when he swears. Or that he is funny at all. It's not true. All Paul does is swear and smoke and drink and make rude comments. At least Step Brothers was quotable, Paul tries to make as many rude comments that he can but none of them land or get remembered. They could have found someone better to be Paul. And this brings us to Kristin Wiig's character. Oh god was she awful. There was no need for her character to be in the story. They just wanted a love interest. And as soon as she got in a fight with Paul over god (she was a creationist and Paul touches her brain and she sees evolution) and then from then on she bashed religion almost immediately. It got annoying in about 5 seconds. And it wasn't funny, all they did was get angry at each other. It was like watching a married couple fight, it was just awkward.

There isn't much else to say about the film. For the nerds, there are a lot of sci-fi references. I caught a few but I am sure that I missed many more. There was even a blues brothers reference which I found delightfully silly. But I am sure the hardcore geek would laugh more because they understood what people were saying.

So Simon Pegg is wonderful as usual. I bet this film would have lived up to my expectations if Edgar Wright directed, but I guess this is what I get for overhyping a movie I want to see.

1 and a half out of 4 stars

-Christopher O'Connell