Paul: Simon Pegg & Nick Frost are a great comedic team. I entered their world with Shaun Of The Dead, then Hot Fuzz, and only recently, because I'm on no discernible natural human schedule, Spaced. All of which were created with, and directed by, Edgar Wright. Shaun Of The Dead might be my favorite movie of "the aughts" (it's surely in the top 5, in any event)- a film about getting your life together, leaving childish things behind, and surviving a zombie apocalypse. Hot Fuzz is an underrated small town homage to big city, loud, buddy cop action movies that manages to remain markedly human (and realistically violent) in spite of its references. Spaced was one of those rare TV shows where the funny is the icing on an already satisfying human drama cake. Mmmm... human drama cake...
Last summer Edgar Wright made his first non-Pegg/Frost movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I liked it. A little. I keep meaning to revisit it to see if I'll actually like it a lot (mostly because there's some serious love for the movie from various people whose opinions I trust), but the fact that I'm never psyched to do that, even when I have a couple of hours to kill, is a bit telling, I fear. When I think about the movie I keep coming back to the same feeling- that Wright got done what he set out to do- make the perfect movie version of an 8-bit video game. Problem is, most 8-bit video games get really repetitive somewhere in the middle, stay that way for a while, and then you're fighting the big boss at the end... which is really more of the same, just a little more involved. And since it's not 1987, Mega Man just doesn't sound like a fun way to spend an afternoon anymore.
Anyway, enough about Scott Pilgrim.
This past weekend Nick Frost and Simon Pegg teamed up for the first time without Edgar Wright in Paul. Not the most dynamic of movies, to be sure, but it turned out slightly better than Scott Pilgrim. In my humble opinion, anyway.
Graeme Willy (Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Frost) are two British nerds that skipped over the pond on a pilgrimage to Nerd Mecca: Comic-Con San Diego. From there they go on an RV road trip through the southwest to sightsee famous UFO landing places. On their trek they run into Paul- an escaped alien from Area 51 who's just trying to get home. (Laid-back) wackiness ensues.
What works best here is that chemistry that Frost and Pegg have cultivated over the past 10 years, or so. These guys are just so damned likeable. Individually, yes, but especially as a team. That said, they're not Cheech and Chong or Abbott and Costello. What I mean by that is that they're not just playing the same characters in every movie they do (absolutely no offense meant to Marin, Tommy, Bud, & Lou). The dynamic survives, but the characterization is always fresh and different. Here they're both pretty mild-mannered, good-hearted, child-like, uh... well, nerds. They love comic books and sci-fi. And when they come across an alien in the desert it doesn't take much convincing for them to give the guy a ride. Pretty basic. In fact, the whole movie has this matter-of-fact quality about it that's quite charming... if not just a little spiritless at times. Seth Rogen provides the voice & mo-cap of Paul, and it's his higher-than-thou approach that keeps the movie grounded. I mean, picking up a stranded alien is wacky enough. We don't need the character to be off-the-wall bonkers. And Rogen makes Paul one likeable, laid-back alien dude. Kristen Wiig shows up as a socially-repressed, religious RV park owner (co-owned with her dad- Norm from Fargo!), and for a second there I thought, "oh no, now we're going to have a wacky religious nut as an obvious contrast to our 'heroes'." But minutes later, Paul zaps the realities of evolution into her brain with some crazy ESP power and does away with that contrivance.* There's a great little scene where she (extremely awkwardly) comes on to Pegg and escalates from innocent to naughty in 10 seconds flat. Again, though, she doesn't take it too far (imagine a less manic Amy Poehler). This is still a very real, human movie.
No worries, though- there is a little Looney Tunes in this one. Joe Lo Truglio & Bill Hader play a pair of dumbass G-Men that are assisting Jason Bateman in his quest to track down Paul. Bateman brings the cool, and Lo Truglio & Hader bring the slapstick and cluelessness. It works well, mostly because they don't overwhelm us with screen time.
Oh, yeah, the references. Yes, this one's chock full of geekified sci-fi movie references. But they never come from out of left field and always seem to fit the plot. In fact, a couple of times one whizzed right by me and only later did I realize it was a reference. They do come at you fairly regularly in the final act, though. Speaking of that, it's the last half-hour that finally sold me on Paul. That's not to say the first 2/3 of the movie are bad. It plods along at times, but I still wouldn't call it slow. I never lost interest. I think the deal here is that they kept it so deliberately chill that it lacked the peaks and valleys that can sometimes make or break a movie. In the long run, though, I'd rather get a movie that stays steadily good than one that fails horribly by trying too hard to pander to the dummies out there with obvious false gusto. Paul was directed by Greg Mottola, who also directed Superbad, and I kinda felt the same way about that one- it could very easily have copped out and gone all American Pie on us, but Mottola went for the comedy naturally instead of going for cheap laughs by having his characters stick their cocks in pastry or somehow unknowingly fuck old people in closets. WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA!!!
So, yeah- good flick, all around. You'll see more dynamic stuff this year, but Paul is a light-hearted, feel-good, chill time at the 'plex.
7 out of 10 Nerdy Sci-Fi References
* I was actually a little surprised (and definitely delighted) at how much eye-rolling the concept of religion got in this movie. The Hollywood machine usually tries to shy away from god-bashing, doesn't it? I guess it's more proof that Mottola was making this movie for people who think with their brains, not their bibles. Which is why it will probably be gone by this time next week. Catch it while you can!
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