Mar
21
“Paul” Review
Filed Under Movies
I would like to call upon all filmmakers to begin a moratorium on putting “Star Wars” references in movies. Almost 35 years removed from the original film, and we’re still being inundated with lines of dialogue, iconography and subtle nods to the saga. It’s become like some sort of nervous tic that filmmakers have today. I appreciate the fact that they’ve been inspired by “Star Wars.” I get it. Can we move on now? Can we make a movie that stands on its own?
With “Paul,” the answer is no. “Paul” isn’t so much as movie as it is a collection of film references built around the conceit of two English sci-fi geeks encountering a slacker spaceman while on a road trip in the U.S. What sounds like a cute concept — and in the right hands (Edgar Wright’s), it probably could’ve been — is a movie that feels worn out about ten minutes in.
Let’s make no mistake. I consider myself a movie nerd, and I collected comic books for 17 years. I became a serious Trekkie in 2009. I’ve also very recently gotten into “The X-Files.” So, it’s not like I consider myself some sort of elitist who looks down his nose at grown men who wear shirts with obscure comic book characters on them; during the film, I actually spent more time wondering where I could get Nick Frost’s Ming the Merciless t-shirt than I did caring about whether or not they’ll get the epinonimous alien home.
All that being said, I still found “Paul” to be a movie that feels like they shot the first draft of the script. I wouldn’t have minded being inundated with tired tips-of-the-hat to practically every large-scale science fiction movie made over the past three decades if I’d been guffawing the whole time. But the jokes simply aren’t there. I chuckled a few times, but I expected much, much more from one of the co-writers of “Shaun of the Dead” and the director of “Superbad.”
In “Paul,” two life-long friends — graphic novelists Clive (Nick Frost) and Graeme (Simon Pegg) — attend the San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, then they rent an RV to go on a tour of all the famous alien sightings in the Southwest. It’s during this tour that they meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), an actual alien from outer space. Paul crash-landed on Earth decades ago and has now outlived his usefulness in the eyes of the government. Paul has to get to a rendezvous point where his fellow spacemen can pick him up and take him home. If he’s captured by the government, his stem cells will be harvested and they’ll cut out his brain.
Paul is a bit of a prankster. He comes across as sort of an affable roommate rather than a snarling Xenomorph. If anything, he’s a much more interesting character than the two aggressively boring dweebs he stumbles upon in the desert. I liked Paul all right. He’s no E.T., but the character deserved to be the comedic foil for a much better duo of straight men than Clive and Graeme.
See, the problem with having two movie geeks as heroes is that they’re basically ciphers. They have no idea how to drive the action of the story because they’re simply characterizations rather than full-on characters. One is the fat nerd, and he’s a frustrated sci-fi writer; and the other one, well, he’s also fat but not as much, and he’s the sci-fi artist. Oh, and they speak Klingon. There’s nothing that really defines them or dictates their actions. They just spend most of the film reacting to things and going along amiably with whatever Paul needs them to do.
The passivity of the heroes makes for a rather listless plot. They’re being doggedly pursued by Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) and his two lackeys (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio), but they still seem to have plenty of time to sit out by a campfire and shoot the bull.
I had high hopes for “Paul.” But I’m just exhausted by material now that gets lost up its own ass with the endless pop cultural namechecking. We need to start making new classics, not obsessing over old ones.
-Brad Lohan
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