TITLE: Paul
STARRING: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Seth Rogen
DIRECTOR: Greg Mottola
STUDIO: Big Talk Productions, Relativity Media, Working Title Films, Universal Pictures
RATED: R
RUN TIME: 104 minutes
RELEASED: March 18, 2011

By Chris Kromphardt
Staff Writer, Justice Administrator

2011 is shaping up to be the Year of Rampant Spielberg Fanboy-ism, and Paul, the latest film to star the British comedic pair Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, is the first homage out of the gate. It is the pair’s first collaboration since 2007’s Hot Fuzz, and the first without director Edgar Wright, who was occupied with directing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. However, as eagerly anticipated as Paul has been by fans of both Pegg and Frost and Spielberg, perhaps its release in March—sandwiched as it is between the tail end of the deluge of Oscar-nominated films and the beginning of the summer blockblusters, and usually a dumping ground for movies that do not quite fit into either of these categories—is a sign that Paul might not be the film fans had been hoping for.

Granted, Paul may have been fighting a losing battle from the beginning. The other movies that qualify 2011 as the YoRSF—this summer’s Super 8 and the holiday season’s first installment of Tintin—are being released in more traditional times of the year for big movies, and feature the involvement of the man himself, Steven Spielberg, who seems to be staging a return to making the types of high-adventure movies that made his a household name. But Pegg and Frost have a devoted following of their own, accumulated thanks to films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and the television series Spaced, so Paul faced greater expectations than simply being a send-up to Spielberg. Because of this fan base’s lofty expectations for Paul to be on par with their previous films, the filmmakers had their work cut out for them; consequently, the (almost) lack of Spielberg cannot be completely blamed for Paul’s failing to hit the mark.

Paul tells the story of two friends who are acting out one of their biggest dreams: traveling from their homes in Britain to America to visit San Diego Comic Con and tour the American Southwest, checking out Area 51 and other extraterrestrial landmarks. Their expedition is interrupted by the arrival of Paul—voiced to stoner perfection by Seth Rogen—an alien who crashed to Earth during the Forties. Paul, who’s been serving as a veritable PR representative for all-things-ET in pop culture during the last 70 years, senses he has worn out his welcome on Earth, and enlists our protagonists to help him flee the planet. Along the way they meet up with a fundamentalist Christian—a, at the risk of redundancy, weird Kristen Wiig—and are chased by federal agents, played by Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, and Joe Lo Truglio.

Paul’s not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a disappointing one. The cast has proven comedic chops, and previous collaborations by Pegg and Frost, while parodies, were engaging—the characters were of course funny, but you also cared for them and were interested in what they were doing. That is not so much the case with Paul, where once the characters and plot are set in motion things just kind of coast. Perhaps this is partially due to Wright—Pegg and Frost’s friend and frequent collaborator—not being in the director’s chair. A change in the chemistry that produced the brilliant humor of Shaun of the Dead may be the proximate cause of Paul’s, well, unremarkableness.

And that is Paul’s most salient feature: in a year where it is popular to harken back to some of Spielberg’s most iconic films, it is not enough go small and safe. You have to shoot for the stars.

RATING: 6/10

All photos from rottentomatoes.com.