Paul (2011) - Review

The topic of aliens is interesting to me, but not many movies have done it well.  I’ve got the complete series of The X-Files lying around and still haven’t watched past the first half of Season 1.  I hear it takes a nose dive in the later seasons anyway, but what I’m saying is that I’m not well-versed in alien culture, specifically the Roswell, Area 51 variety.  From what I can tell though, there aren’t a lot of alien comedies out there (at least not many that have made their existence known to humans).

Paul isn’t so much a comedy as an action/adventure flick that happens to have a lot of comedic actors in it.  Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader... you’ve got a who’s who of some really terrific comedians here but the script just isn’t that funny.  It’s not that it swings and misses all the time, there just really aren’t that many jokes.

Come on guys, Nick Frost isn't that fat

I feel like that’s to the movie’s credit though.  The jokes that do exist are pretty funny, especially once we’ve gotten all the introductions out of the way (yeah, the first fifteen minutes or so are kind of dry).  The film has a pretty strong antitheist bent that I wasn’t expecting, but it’s a bold move to take on such a lighthearted comedy.  In fact, most of the best jokes derive from this subplot of a hyper-religious girl played by Kristen Wiig suddenly being given the knowledge of the cosmos by Paul, the titular alien, including the knowledge that the Abrahamic God does not exist, shattering her entire worldview.

Jason Bateman and Bill Hader are hilarious as G-men hunting Paul down.  It’s a good time.  Don’t expect too many jokes because the comedy leanings on this are pretty slight.  What you can expect, however, is a fantastic and fun adventure, on-the-run (that is not a genre) movie.