SXSW: An amiable alien comedy that’s casual in more ways than one, Paul does the bare minimum to execute its premise, and little more to entertain. Written by Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead creators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the film follows professional geeks Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) on their geek holiday to the United States. It begins with Comic-Con in San Diego, and proceeds with a road trip hitting all of the alien conspiracy theory hotspots in the American southwest. Along the way they meet someone even more out of place than they are, and try to help him get home.
As nerds abroad, Pegg and Frost bring a little freshness to the frayed caricature of the modern comic book obsessive. They are, perhaps, what the teenagers in director Greg Mottola’s Superbad might have grown up to be, had they not been symbolically parted by actual romantic prospects and a slow-moving escalator at the end of that film. They speak Klingon and get giddy about pizza; they also suffer through a string of increasingly stale accusations about the nature of their relationship. The laughs are pretty limp all around, and when the humour isn’t veering into the lewd and profane, it seems aimed at a much younger demographic — say, middle-schoolers — than the high-rolling cast would suggest.
People think Graeme and Clive are gay; Graeme and Clive accidentally insult their Latino bellhop with an ill-timed alien reference. It’s tough to avoid judgment, and the world can be a hostile place outside the confines of your tribe. The arrival of Paul, a little green alien (you might remember him from every representation of little green aliens, ever) from the Andromeda galaxy, picks up on this sentiment and ambles with it for a while. Paul has been held captive by the United States government for 60 years, ever since his spaceship crashed to Earth. During that time he moonlit as a Hollywood consultant: It is eventually revealed that Paul’s seemingly referential quirks — including the ability to disappear, Predator-style, his fondness for Reeses Pieces, and the ability to heal wounds like E.T.—were in fact inspired by his design.
Pop culture returned the favour by giving Paul the voice of Seth Rogen and the fashion sense of a surf bum on laundry day. A cute little dude with gleaming cat eyes and a huge, hot air balloon head atop his bendy, thin-limbed body, Paul is an expressive, unlikely embodiment of Rogen’s alternately laid back and frantic charm. Visually and otherwise, he blends in well with the boys, who are at first horrified and then enraptured to make his acquaintance. Paul escaped from his secret government base and is racing to signal for an intergalactic pick-up before his captors, led by a stone-faced Jason Bateman, catch up to him. With the central trio installed in Clive and Graeme’s rented RV and the premise established, Paul is primed to move into a higher gear. Instead it chugs along in second, suffering from a seeming lack of care with its comedy — I’m not sure Kristen Wiig has ever been less funny than she is as the Jesus freak who joins the group after a stint hiding in a trailer park — and a lack of imagination in its story.
Mottola’s direction feels hands off at best and hands-in-pockets when his actors need him most. The script is thin to begin with, and can’t really stand to be drained further by a low energy aesthetic. 'It’s safe to say we all learned something from this," Paul cracks toward the end of the film. 'Be yourself and speak from your heart, or some shit like that." To that I would add: If you’re going to make a hip alien road comedy, make it hip, make it a comedy, and by all means get out there and burn some rubber on the freeway.
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