“This is America. Kidnapping a Christian is worse than harboring a fugitive”
Alright. He we are: Day 4. The last film to be made by Simon Pegg and co. After this, all that are left are simply films he has starred in.
Paul is the third film made with Pegg, Frost acting, and Park producing. Edgar Wright wasn’t on-board this time which may explain why this is my least favorite out of the three films—it is certainly one of the funniest but it just doesn’t have the Wright feel to it (and yes, that pun was indented). Instead, this film was co-written by Pegg and Frost instead of Pegg and Wright and it was directed by Greg Mottola who directed Superbad—this might explain further, why I was not that impressed by Paul—I did not really like Superbad all that much.
Pegg goes back into a nerd-dork role that is even more dorky and nerdy than Tim from Spaced. However, he does take-up Tim’s old carrier of graphic artist so there is some reference to Spaced. If you pay attention, there are a few more nods to this. For example, the guys (Jim and Jason) that did all of Tim’s drawings in Spaced also did Graeme’s drawings in Paul. While on the subject of art, you may, notice that the t-shirt the Ruth is wearing has a comic that is drawn by the same guy (Oscar Rights) who did Danny’s flip-book cartoon in Hot Fuzz and the art for the continuity holes for Shaun of the Dead on the DVD.
Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) are on holiday from England to go to comic-con in San Diego and then take a road trip down the Extraterrestrial Highway to visit all the alien paranormal hotspots such as Area 51, the Black Mailbox, and Roswell.
The film starts with a spaceship landing on a little girl’s dog named Paul in Wyoming in 1947 (1947 was also the year of the Roswell crash and the year Pegg’s mom was born). We then cut to comic-con (not the actual comic-con). The Orcs in the street are actually the real Orc costumes borrowed from Peter Jackson (Pegg makes friends everywhere he goes).
While on their road trip, driving one night a car starts to speed up behind them blaring its horn and flashing its headlights. They think it is couple of rednecks they pissed off back at a diner but it turns out to be just someone in a hurry. Once the car passes them, the driver loses control and the car flips off the road. When Graeme and Clive go to investigate, it turns out to be an alien called Paul.
Paul is being chased by secret agents done up to look like “men in black” and the film essentially becomes a “road-trip’ movie with aliens. It’s mostly a comedy but does have action and suspense. I guess the best way to describe it is a cross between Race with the Devil, E. T, and National Lampoon’s: Vacation.
Just a couple of side-notes. While the filming of Paul was taking place, Park was also producing Scott Pilgrim and Pegg became a father.
Paul, like Spaced, references tons of science-fiction films and Steven Spielberg films in general. There are references and nods to Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Aliens, Predator, Back to the Future, E. T, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, etc. One of more subtle but great references to look out for is the scene at the bar and the bluegrass band is playing the cantina theme from Star Wars. At one point Paul talks to Spielberg on the phone and it really is Spielberg talking.
A few location shots are also references back to great movies. For example, the town the group stops in where Paul is dressed as a cowboy (at this point it is not a CGI Paul but the stunt-coordinators son dressed up in a Paul costume) is a very famous location. The town is Las Vegas, New Mexico and on the very block, that Paul is filmed is the diner from the scene in Easy Rider when Jack Nicolson is first introduced. In addition, it is where the car is blown up outside a pharmacy in No Country for Old Men. There is a scene from Red Dawn that is shot here also.
The movie also features a very famous cast and the film is very well acted.
However, it still was a letdown after seeing Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Paul does not have the clever blend that gave the other films humor. Paul mostly relies on running gags, references, and essentially, for lack of a better term, ‘potty-mouth’ humor. It is a hilarious film, I will give it that, but I feel it could have been so much better had Edgar Wright been working with them like the last two times. Perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that this time it was intended more for an American audience, I really can’t say why it wasn’t such a hit with me as the his previous works. However, that is not to say that films starring Simon Pegg are always worse without all his friends working on it as well, for example, Run, Fatboy, Run is a great movie and it has only Pegg and no Wright, Frost, or Park.
I like the movies pace and I like how it accesses more than just laughter from the audience. The film does have intense and serious moments as well as a few adrenaline fueled scenes that seem to be out of an action movie, but overall, it is just not as great as the movies that came before. Paul gets 4 out of 5 from me.
I will say one fantastic thing about this film is Paul himself. The detailed CGI animation is the most realistic I have seen in many films. It is brilliantly animated and I bow down to the huge animation team that made this possible. Watch the film, the look of Paul is really spectacular and I truly admire the work of these animators. The film gets an extra .5 stars just for the work that went into the CGI for Paul. That doesn’t seem like much, but that is a huge percentage of quality to dedicate to only one aspect of an entire film. So with the work on Paul, the film gets 4.5 out of 5
*!SPOILER ALERT!*
I thought I would throw this in here because of something in Nerd Do Well. Throughout the movie, there is the mystery of who plays the boss of the secret agency. We know she is female from her voice. Now most of the super-sci-fi fans will probably pick up on the voice and figure out who it is. The people who like to feck with surprises will check imdb. I am assuming those of you reading this part knows whom it is. In Pegg’s book he talks about how when he was a kid he had a huge crush of Diane Keaton and at one point fell in love with another actress for a brief time. He wrote poems when he was younger and wrote one for Diane Keaton and one for the other actress. Here is that poem: it can be found on pg.263 of Simon Pegg’s book Nerd Do Well published by Gotham Books in June, 2011:
Sigourney
You make me feel…
Like countless innuendo
You drive me round the bend
Oh Sig!
What will I tell Diane?
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