Only the slackers survive, says the new movie Paul.
The film brings to America Nick Frost (Clive, Pirate Radio) and Simon Pegg (Graeme, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader), the duo behind 2007’s Hot Fuzz and 2004’s Shaun of the Dead. This time they’re two sci-fi geeks on a “holiday” tour of the extraterrestrial west.
They do not make it far. After a start in San Diego at Comic-Con, their first excursion to the Black Mailbox site in the Nevada desert is cut short when a mysterious black sedan careens off the road nearby.
Inside they discover Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen, The Green Hornet), a big-headed and bug-eyed alien on the run from his government captors who have suddenly run out of use for him. This, naturally, happens after his long stay in a secret military base heavily implied to be the warehouse of relics seen at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Reserved and emphatically British, Clive and Graeme have little in common with Paul, the pot-smoking, shirtless and cargo shorts-wearing extraterrestrial who says the reason he looks so much like the bug-eyed caricatures of aliens from Roswell tourist traps is that he has been covertly influencing American pop culture for years.
But as things unfold, and the government comes closer to catching the group, Paul becomes more vulnerable, and Clive and Graeme must put some of their studiously earned sci-fi knowledge to use. As Clive says about his stomach, “It’s not fat, it’s power.”
Best known for Superbad, director Greg Mottola (Adventureland) uses a similar approach in Paul to tell his story of misfits in a bind. The story is light, up-tempo and jokes come frequently. Soon enough, like Superbad, everything catches on fire.
Like his previous work, what is not so original in Paul is fixed by Mottola’s warm touch with character and its casting of likable actors.
Jane Lynch (Glee) makes an appearance, as does Jeffrey Tambor (Win Win). The federal pursuit is led by Jason Bateman (The Switch) as Agent Zoil. His bumbling underlings are Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live) as the would-be super-cop Haggard, and Joe Lo Trugilo (Gulliver’s Travels) as O’Reilly.
What may irritate audiences is the film’s reliance on caricatures of western people.
Clive, Graeme and Paul meet Ruth (Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live), a Christian fundamentalist with one eye who works at the Pearly Gates RV park with her father.
Eventually Paul dissembles Ruth’s religion by telepathically reaching into her brain to show her everything he knows.
Not that there’s really anything wrong with that, but as with the homophobic good old boys who think Clive and Graeme are gay, Wiig’s character is just a little cheap.
But this may be, of course, taking Paul too seriously.
Regardless, as the appearances pile up, viewers will probably forget whatever they dislike in Paul and instead enjoy the collaborative feel of the film. Paul is stacked with actors from funnier projects such as Arrested Development, Party Down, Superbad and, yes, Hot Fuzz.
In the end, their triumph is our triumph. For $11 viewers should be pre-disposed to like what they see, anyway. Paul is easy to fall into, hard to dislike and, either way, it beats Battle: Los Angeles.
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
waldo@umdbk.com
