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seriousficPaul is vaguely disappointing if you watch it, and really disappointing if you know it's from the guys behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I was actually surprised to see Nick Frost and Simon Pegg credited as screenwriters; I had just assumed this was work-for-hire. You know, there was a script they thought was kinda cute, they needed to pay for their mortgages, so they decided to make a harmless little comedy.
And that's really the most you can say for it. It's harmless. Maybe it's the fact that instead of doing their usual genre satire, they're kinda blending the alien sci-fi movie with the road trip movie (both of which are pretty comedic anyway, so you can't really satire them). But there's a surprising amount of lame here. First off, it's one thing to be asked to care about Shaun and Ed and even Shaun's relationship with Liz. Shaun of the Dead spends a lot of time establishing those characters. In Paul, Pegg and Frost are pretty much just playing themselves. There's no real characterization, or character arcs... and okay, it's a comedy, that stuff doesn't matter as long as it's funny, but the movie actually has quite a few scenes where you're expected to care about these cyphers and whether or not they get to have sex with Kristen Wigg.
Second problem, there's a rather bizarre atheist subplot which is both A. Preachy and B. Not funny, which is what they're gripping about with Christianity, but whatever. This is all played for serious business, and there isn't really any subversion or punchline to this, there's just this woman they come across who believes in Intelligent Design, she insists the Earth is 4000 years old, they tell her it's not, and... scene. Now, maybe one scene of this would be cathartic, if that's your thing, but it just goes on and on, and there's no real insight there. It's just "hey, fundamentalists and rednecks exist, you guys." (Our heroes are also being pursued by a pair of rednecks, who are justifiably angry since Pegg and Frost totaled their pick-up and didn't even leave their insurance information. This at first seems like a subversion, and then just turns out to be lazy screenwriting).
Third problem, there are a ton of geeky in-jokes. I'm a geek and I got most of them and I'm complaining. They were there in Shaun and Fuzz too, but there they reworked them a bit so they were supplementing the humor and not replacing it. If Shaun of the Dead was the first zombie movie you'd ever watched, it'd still be funny. Here, the third act is literally like a Friedberg/Seltzer movie. It's just "oh, here's a thing from E.T., oh, here's a thing from Close Encounters of the Third Kind." There's even a bit where someone is pointing a gun at someone else and says "Smile, you son of a bitch." C'mon, Jaws isn't even a sci-fi movie (Jaws 2, in which sharks are telepathic and out for revenge, is).
And the film spends so much time on the Didacticism and the references that there's a surprising lack of comedy. For instance, towards the middle there's a bit where the heroes stop into a honky-tonk bar, where they run afoul of both the rednecks and the love interest's fundamentalist father and a bar fight ensues. Big comedic setpiece right? No, they just leave. Or the beginning, where they're at ComicCon and they meet Jeffrey Tambor, who's playing a stuck-up sci-fi author? They just walk around for a few minutes, talk about how great ComicCon is, and leave. Even the gay subtext is disappointing. A few people mistake Pegg and Frost for gay, they say they're not gay, and that's about it (pretty much the opening gag is that they've been forced to share a motel room with a single bed. That's it. No joke. There was just a problem with the reservations).
Dear comedy writers of all nations: "A-ha, some men like having sex with other men, and though it may seem like a reasonable presumption to think we number among them, in actuality we are heterosexual" IS NOT BY ITSELF A JOKE.
And that's really the most you can say for it. It's harmless. Maybe it's the fact that instead of doing their usual genre satire, they're kinda blending the alien sci-fi movie with the road trip movie (both of which are pretty comedic anyway, so you can't really satire them). But there's a surprising amount of lame here. First off, it's one thing to be asked to care about Shaun and Ed and even Shaun's relationship with Liz. Shaun of the Dead spends a lot of time establishing those characters. In Paul, Pegg and Frost are pretty much just playing themselves. There's no real characterization, or character arcs... and okay, it's a comedy, that stuff doesn't matter as long as it's funny, but the movie actually has quite a few scenes where you're expected to care about these cyphers and whether or not they get to have sex with Kristen Wigg.
Second problem, there's a rather bizarre atheist subplot which is both A. Preachy and B. Not funny, which is what they're gripping about with Christianity, but whatever. This is all played for serious business, and there isn't really any subversion or punchline to this, there's just this woman they come across who believes in Intelligent Design, she insists the Earth is 4000 years old, they tell her it's not, and... scene. Now, maybe one scene of this would be cathartic, if that's your thing, but it just goes on and on, and there's no real insight there. It's just "hey, fundamentalists and rednecks exist, you guys." (Our heroes are also being pursued by a pair of rednecks, who are justifiably angry since Pegg and Frost totaled their pick-up and didn't even leave their insurance information. This at first seems like a subversion, and then just turns out to be lazy screenwriting).
Third problem, there are a ton of geeky in-jokes. I'm a geek and I got most of them and I'm complaining. They were there in Shaun and Fuzz too, but there they reworked them a bit so they were supplementing the humor and not replacing it. If Shaun of the Dead was the first zombie movie you'd ever watched, it'd still be funny. Here, the third act is literally like a Friedberg/Seltzer movie. It's just "oh, here's a thing from E.T., oh, here's a thing from Close Encounters of the Third Kind." There's even a bit where someone is pointing a gun at someone else and says "Smile, you son of a bitch." C'mon, Jaws isn't even a sci-fi movie (Jaws 2, in which sharks are telepathic and out for revenge, is).
And the film spends so much time on the Didacticism and the references that there's a surprising lack of comedy. For instance, towards the middle there's a bit where the heroes stop into a honky-tonk bar, where they run afoul of both the rednecks and the love interest's fundamentalist father and a bar fight ensues. Big comedic setpiece right? No, they just leave. Or the beginning, where they're at ComicCon and they meet Jeffrey Tambor, who's playing a stuck-up sci-fi author? They just walk around for a few minutes, talk about how great ComicCon is, and leave. Even the gay subtext is disappointing. A few people mistake Pegg and Frost for gay, they say they're not gay, and that's about it (pretty much the opening gag is that they've been forced to share a motel room with a single bed. That's it. No joke. There was just a problem with the reservations).
Dear comedy writers of all nations: "A-ha, some men like having sex with other men, and though it may seem like a reasonable presumption to think we number among them, in actuality we are heterosexual" IS NOT BY ITSELF A JOKE.
