Paul
Two Brits travel cross country USA for Comicon as they are both Sci-Fi junkies. They witness a car crash, and discover that there is a real life alien was driving. Soon they befriend him, as he is friendly, and down to earth, and has the very normal name of ‘Paul’. They decide to travel with him cross country as his people are heading to pick him up from where he crashed all the way back in 1947.
However they soon find themselves being chased by a trio of secret agents under the orders of a secret “Big Guy”.
Direction
Directed by Adventureland director Greg Mottola, it is done well, with solid use of action at times – with plenty of times the trio of agents almost catch up to them.
Also Paul being completely CGI is quite fluid use of the technology.
Cast/Characters
Comedy duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play the Brits Graeme and Clive.
Jason Bateman plays the agent Zoil, and his two underlings are played by comedy greats Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio.
Kristin Wiig plays Ruth, who joins them on their journey.
A collection of who’s who have small to moderate roles, such as Jane Lynch, John Carroll Lynch, Blythe Danner, Dave Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Sigourney Weaver and Seth Rogan as the voice of Paul.
Even director Steven Spielberg has a small voice cameo.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
The blend of Science Fiction/Comedy and even a bit of drama are done… okay.
I felt this is one of the Pegg/Frost written comedies to be one of their poorest, as they rely too much on jokes that either don’t land, or go nowhere (like the constant homophobic jokes).
It also tries to be overly serious at times with the overly religious Ruth becoming ‘aware’ of evolution – and then loving swearing. While Wiig is a very funny comedienne in her own right, once again the jokes just don’t land as well as they could have.
I did enjoy the movie connections/references and some of these did make me chuckle (especially Agent Zoil’s first name of Lorenzo) – there are too many movies to list but they either are part of pop culture (the Cantina song from Star Wars) , or the on camera cast’s own filmography (Get Away from her you B*tch against Ripley herself).
Overall
I could go either way on this one, while I didn’t dislike it, I didn’t love it.
3/5