Paul

Paul (Rated R)

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kristin Wiig, Jason Bateman, voice of Seth Rogen

Directed by Greg Mottola

Plot: Two British visitors to Comic-Con decide to take tour of Alien hotspots until they actually encounter an alien.

When I see a movie with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, I've been trained to see something special.  Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are both incredibly funny films.  With Paul, I've grown to understand that there is a third part of the team that makes the first two Frost/Pegg collaborations work - director Edgar Wright.  He's not affiliated with Paul.  Instead we get director Greg Mottola who did Superbad and Adventureland, and the movie seems to suffer from his lack of vision and comedic timing.

Paul is an alien that crash lands and is kept at a facility for sixty years.  When he realizes he's a prisoner and not a guest, he makes a break for it and tries to get home.  Hooking up with two British tourists (Pegg & Frost), they embark on a journey to meet Paul's rescue ship.  Along the way they team up with a Bible thumping RV attendant(Kristin Wiig) whose faith is shaken by the revelation of an alien; they are also being chased by FBI agents (Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Jo Lo Truglio).  Basically, this is an R-Rated E.T.

I seem to find myself repeating the same criticism in so many movies this year, but Paul just doesn't seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be.  The first half of the movie is mostly a silly comedy, but the second half takes on some much darker tones.  If you've seen the trailer, then you have seen most of the funniest bits. It's not an unenjoyable film; I just expected more.  The movie is one big homage to past science fiction films, including a great cameo by Sigourney Weaver.  It's just that for every funny part there are a couple of not so funny parts, and truly, most of the laughs come from picking out the bits from other films - I'm not sure that qualifies as a great film.

The problems with this movie have nothing to do with the acting.  The movie suffers from a lack of direction, and the script could have been a lot tighter.  You probably could have cut 15-20 minutes and had better movie.  I think part of the problem is that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost wrote the script, and I just don't think Greg Mottola is a strong enough director to stand up and say, "Let's reign this in a little bit."

The other issue that I think may hurt this movie is it is very anti-Christian.  It portrays Wiig's character and (particularly) her father in the worst possible light as the most fundamental of Christians.  Wiig's character is even wearing a t-shirt of Jesus shooting Charles Darwin in the head and saying "Evolve this!"  Paul's character is used to undermine her faith and then throws in several jabs at the dad later.  I'm not above taking a shot at the radical fringe of my own faith, but I do it out of concern for how I feel they cause damage to the faith as a whole.  The movie makes no effort to differentiate that not all Christians feel as these characters do, and they go out of their way to do it in a hateful way.

Paul is not a bad film; it is just not the film I was expecting, and it's not the film I was promised in the trailer.  Between this and Adventureland, it's becoming a trend in Mottola's movies.  He plays the trailers up to be silly Superbad-style comedies, and then takes the film in much darker directions.

The other problem for me in this movie is Kristin Wiig.  I am Wiiged-out.  Between being over-used on Saturday Night Live and bringing the same-style characters to the movies, I'm pretty much done with her.  Don't get me wrong; Kristin Wigg is a talented comedienne, but she has become the female Will Ferrel (a parody of herself), and I'm hoping after May's Bridesmaids to get a nice long hiatus from her.  I would like to see her do a drama or something different.

I'm running into the same thing with Seth Rogen.  While I enjoyed his voice work in Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs Aliens, Paul is just another in a long line of Rogen's slacker, stoner characters.  The special effects of putting a CGI- Paul into a live-action movie are very good though, better than I've seen recently.  It was very easy to forget he was a CGI character.  However, I did find having him voiced by Rogen took me out of the film at times.

I enjoyed Paul, but I don't think it's for the general audiences.  You have to be a major fanboy (nerd) to get the references, and I think that's who the movie was made for.  I went to a midnight showing of this, expecting it to be busy, and I think there were eight or nine people in the theater (and three of them were my group.)  I was expecting Paul to be a major box office draw this weekend, but if last night's showing is any indication, it's going to be a major disappointment.

*****
Dad Suitability - If Dad is a major fanboy like me, he'll probably enjoy the movie.  Just make sure he goes into it with lower expectations than I did.

Kid Suitability - Rated R almost exclusively for language (and a couple of mild drug references), Paul isn't for young children.  The language is over the top, and it's not something that usually bothers me, but it just seemed to be thrown in to get the R Rating here.