Review #2 "Paul"

Paul, directed by Greg Mottola and staring Simon Pegg along with Nick Frost, is about two nerds who are at Comic-Con when they begin their road trip across all of the United States' UFO hot spots. Along the way they wind up encountering a real alien, aptly named Paul. He crash landed on earth years ago, helped the government for awhile, then split as soon as he learned that they wanted to probe him. Now he's searching for a way to get back home and he's enlisted the two nerds to help him out. 

The movie is a play of off everything we know about famous sci-fi movies. Everything from E.T., to Men in Black to Star Wars is referenced here. There's even a scene modeled after the cantina sequence from A New Hope. The jokes usually hit their mark, and when they do, it's funny as hell. There are some very, very funny moments throughout the movie. But there are also times when the movie found itself relying on one particular joke over and over again to fill time. Unfortunately this happened to be the most annoying joke of the entire film in which Ruth (Kristen Wigg) learns to curse.

While the group goes cross country with their alien counterpart, they're being tailed by FBI agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) and his underlings Haggard (Bill Hader) and O'Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio). They're serviceable as the villains of the movie, though some of the funniest moments in the movie do involve their characters. The agents are also being directed by an ominous voice for most of the movie. That part is later revealed to be someone you may not have considered at first, but makes perfect sense in the end.

Speaking of cameos, that's something Paul does well. Jeffrey Tambor plays Clive's hero Adam Shadowchild, Jane Lynch plays a crazy waitress, and even Steven Spielberg pops in for a quick phone call. Each has a lot of fun with their part and do actually contribute something to the movie, other than being a one bit joke.

The actors themselves do a rather good job playing their parts. Even Seth Rogen - whose voice is immediately recognizable - has lots of fun playing the alien known as Paul. As usual, Pegg and Frost are the perfect pairing having teamed up before in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Wigg is also rather funny as Ruth, aside from her one joke that gets extremely overused. The only one in the bunch I wasn't overly impressed with was Bateman. The man played his part well, but his character wasn't given much to do other than growl and ask the same questions over and over again.

 

Overall Paul is a very funny movie that's perfect for the nerds. The story is lackluster but in this case that's alright as most of the jokes are funny enough to help you push through to the next one. The characterization is low and all but Wigg's character remain the same throughout the entire film. Would I recommend seeing this in theaters? No, I wouldn't. This is a great movie to netflix when you've got a bunch of friends over and you all want something funny to watch. Besides the great jokes and fun cameos, there's nothing special about Paul.