Now Playing: Paul (2011)

As a spur of the moment thing I headed out to the theater to catch a cheap show. There's not much out right now that I really wanted to see, so we decided to give Paul a shot. I hadn't heard very good things so to say my expectations were lowered would be accurate. I had heard though that if you liked Superbad, you'd probably like Paul. So I expected to find a lot of toilet humor. Hit the jump for more and we'll see if I wasted my money or not.



The movie stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (both from Hot Fuzz) as two British comic-con nerds, Graeme and Clive respectively, that have come to the US to make a road-trip of all the most famous UFO hot-spots. Along the way they come across an alien named Paul who has been trapped on Earth since the early 50's and has become fully accustomed to our culture. Paul, voiced by Seth Rogen (Green Hornet), turns out to be a fairly regular dude who not only knows a lot of movie references, but likes to smoke and drink. He convinces Graeme and Clive to help him escape the agents chasing him and the comedic road-trip begins.

The first thing I have to mention is that the beginning is a little slow to get off the ground. It does a decent job of setting up what Clive and Graeme are like, but there's very few jokes going on for the first 15-20 minutes of the movie, or however long it took before they met Paul. It could be that it was far shorter time before Paul enters the story, but it felt like a long time. I've heard this comment from others, so I know I'm not alone.

It's probing time!

The graphics on Paul himself though are really good. The animation on Paul was great. However, there were a few times I could sense the separation of the actors to Paul, like they're not really looking at him, or they don't quite interact with him properly, revealing the movie magic in that he wasn't really there. I've heard that for the most part there was an actor in Paul's place in the scenes, but there were a few instances where they didn't have someone to fill in for the other stars to act against. These are probably the scenes I noticed. Otherwise it worked well and he was a believable character in that world.

Another cool thing about Paul is that it's littered with references to other sci-fi movies, using lines from classic movies or little nods to sci-fi fans. I particularly liked when they enter a cantina bar and the live band is playing a certain familiar song. Loved it!

As for the laughs, I had been warned about there not being many and mostly being stupid. I can only partly agree with that statement. For whatever reason, if it was because I thought I'd hate this movie walking in, or if I was just in the mood for some dick and fart jokes, I found myself laughing on and off through the film. The jokes were definitely mostly stupid and immature, but I found myself grinning, smirking, and eventually laughing right along with the rest of the small audience. I'm really not sure what it was. Oftentimes I even caught myself giggling along and then thinking to myself "but that wasn't really that funny". So I'm really not sure what it was, but saying it didn't amuse me would simply be lying.

This is a tough call. The humor was quite stupid, but I still laughed quite a bit. It probably also helped I only had to pay half price today. My impression walking out of the theater was "that wasn't that bad." Take that as you will, it would be difficult for me to really recommend Paul being that I'm so ho-hum about it. It's probably a rental movie.