Movie Review: PAUL (2011).

   

If you’re already a fan of the movies that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) make, then rest assured that Paul is probably going to be one of your favorite movies of 2011.  If you’re on the fence about them, it’ll make you a fan for certain.  And if you don’t like them at all, then you’re probably a bit of a jerk, so go read TMZ or Perez Hilton or some other crap website made for catty dickheads.

Paul is the first movie that Pegg & Frost have written together and starred in without Edgar Wright as the director.  (Wright was off making the eventually-to-be-underrated Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.)  The director this time around is Greg Mottola, most recently known for Superbad, and the matching of talent & director is snug a fit as a face-hugger on a Space Marine.  Mottola brings over some humanism from the Apatow school, which keeps things broader and more relatable, preventing all the movie references and science-fiction influences from ever getting too inside-baseball, as the Pegg/Frost geekery is prone to do under Wright’s direction.  Mottola is more interested in flexing some action-movie chops, and in taking a kitchen-sink approach which makes the geekiest stuff just one more lovable element in a movie that is really a celebration of everything we like about movies.

Paul concerns two British sci-fi dweebs, a one-hit-wonder novelist (Frost) and his cover artist (Pegg), whose most memorable creation was a warrior-woman with three boobs.  (The only thing better than two.)  They rent an RV to take a cross-country drive through America, starting at nerd mecca (San Diego Comic-Con) and making a pilgrimage to Area 51.  Deep in the desert of the American Southwest, they encounter a coarse, gregarious, and sometimes belligerent alien who introduces himself as Paul, voiced appropriately by Seth Rogen. 

Like Spielberg’s ET, Paul needs help going home.  Like Starman, he’s on the run.  There are shadowy government forces out to get him, in the form of Jason Bateman’s super-competent Agent Zoil, Bill Hader & Joe LoTruglio’s super-incompetent Haggard & O’Reilly, and the one behind the scenes pulling all the strings, the Big Guy, who is only heard and not seen until the end of the movie.  (One of Paul’s few missteps is the anti-climactic reveal of this iconic actor – there is no one in this audience who does not recognize that voice from the very first scene it is heard.  It’s great to have that person in this movie, but it doesn’t play as the surprise that it seems to be meant to be.)

All of those people are chasing Paul and his friends, not to mention a pair of angry rednecks played by Anchorman’s David Koechner and Observe & Report’s Jesse Plemons, and the fundamentalist RV park owner played by Zodiac’s John Carroll Lynch, who is after the guys after they are forced to kidnap his daughter, played by Kristen Wiig as your next geek dream girl, a rigid believer in intelligent design until she has her mind blown by meeting a real-deal alien.  The point is, Paul is really one long chase scene of a movie, which means that, beyond all of the excellent movie references (which include Alien, Aliens, Predator, Star Wars, Mac & Me, Men In Black, Back To The Future, Lord Of The Rings, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Jaws, Duel, and Raiders Of The Lost Ark – this movie goes heavy on the Spielberg), the movie I was reminded of most frequently was The Cannonball Run.  That’s a good thing, kiddo.

If it sounds like there’s a lot going on, it’s because there is, but it never feels like too much.  The tone of Paul is light and breezy, and uncommonly generous in spirit.  Even the “bad guys” are played by beloved and/or lovable actors who get great lines.   There are a lot of great lines to go around.  This is one seriously quotable movie.  That’s Pegg & Frost’s forte, and on that front, this is their best work yet.  I’m not making claims for Paul as a new classic – it’s not particularly profound (despite Pegg & Frost’s oddly consistent tendency to have at least one of them commit at least one heroic sacrifice in every movie they do) and it’s a bit of a shaggy dog – but it’s one extremely endearing shaggy dog.  As always, you yearn for more of Jason Bateman and particularly more of Kristen Wiig, as her character gets many great moments but the story could use more, but I have to love a movie that so relentlessly goes after creationists, fundamentalists, anti-evolutionists, demagogues, and close minds.

One thing that I couldn’t ignore:  Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as wonderful as they are in this movie and everywhere else, really aren’t looking very healthy.  Pegg in Paul is pastier and blotchier than he’s ever before been seen, and Frost looks like there’s a chest-burster right below his ribcage, straining to explode at any moment.  I haven’t seen two guys looking this unhealthy in a movie since the last time Kevin Smith gave himself an acting role.  Both of these boys really need haircuts, a couple thousand sit-ups, and some rest time in the tanning beds.  I’m not saying any of that to be nasty – quite the contrary, since now more than ever I’m excited to see many more movies from these two, and I wouldn’t want anything to derail their comedic momentum.  Then again, they have Steven Spielberg’s phone number, and they just made their most entertaining movie yet, a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, so I doubt they really need any tips from me.

You still need tips from me, though, so here’s one:  See Paul this weekend.  It’s a good time.

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