Life Derailed By an Alien Who Likes to Party

Last week, I reviewed Battle: Los Angeles, in which aliens invaded earth to colonize us for our water. The aliens were ruthless, brutal, killing machines, and they almost succeeded at wiping out mankind.

This week, I’m here to review the film Paul, which is the opposite film entirely. First of all, it’s a comedy. Secondly, the alien in this movie is a wise-cracking, pot smoking, flip-flop wearing, foul-mouthed extraterrestrial with a heart of gold. He doesn’t want to hurt us, either. All he wants to do is get back to his home planet so some bad guys from the government don’t remove his brain for scientific experiments.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Paul kicks off at Comic Con, the annual comic book convention in San Diego. Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), who write graphic novels about aliens, have come to the convention to kick off a tour of all the great alien sites in America. Setting out in a rented RV, they stop at Area 51 and various other locations until they get to “the black mailbox.” It’s a famous site in Nevada where UFO watchers gather to watch for spacecraft over Groom Lake. When a car runs off the road, they go to investigate. An alien steps out of the shadows and Clive promptly faints and wets himself.

The alien is named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), and he’s running from “the big guy,” who works in a government lab. Graeme, Clive and Paul hit the road. Hot on their trail is Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman), who takes orders from a mysterious woman’s voice on a walkie talkie, and two bumbling agents who take orders from Zoil.

And so the shenanigans begin. The trio gets into all kinds of scrapes and wind up kidnapping Ruth, a fanatically Christian woman played by Kristen Wiig. Will Paul make it to the site where he’s to be picked up by his ship? Will Graeme and Ruth find love? There are some good laughs here, and the film falls squarely into the madcap road trip genre. Pegg and Frost, who wrote the script, have thrown in enough American stereotypes to choke a horse, but because they’re British, I suppose we can’t blame them.

Unfortunately, a huge stumbling block in the movie, at least for me, is the fact that Paul sounds exactly like Seth Rogen’s slacker character Ben Stone in Knocked Up. I half-expected him to have sex with Ruth and make an alien baby, then have to stay on earth to help her to raise the kid. I don’t necessarily need friendly aliens to be members of Mensa, but the movie might be a bit less ridiculous if Paul didn’t fart and talk about getting wasted all the time. I know he’s a scientist and has mystical healing powers, but still.

I think we can learn a couple of things from watching these two alien movies. On the one hand, we’re hopeful that if alien life exists, it will come in peace. On the other hand, we’re terrified that if alien life exists, it will arrive to either obliterate or enslave us. Those who have created Paul can now join the ranks of those optimistic about our first encounter.

Three Patches out of Five.

Rated R for some very rough language. Playing at Edwards Ocean Ranch 7 Cinemas.

 “I thought it was very funny. Weird, but funny.” — Sandy, Laguna Niguel