Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, who have risen to fame for writing and starring in a number of successful “self-aware genre films,” try their hands at the ‘alien encounter’ picture with Paul. Fresh off of a life-changing trip to Comic Con, British mondo nerd Graeme (Pegg) and aspiring science fiction author Clive (Frost) encounter a fugitive weed-smoking slacker alien named Paul (voice of Seth Rogen) fleeing from Area 51 and set out to help him return to his native planet. Along their journey, they meet Bible thumping Ruth (Kristen Wiig) and are hounded by multiple intelligence agencies, as well as Ruth’s crazed father.
Haggard (Bill Hader) and O’Reilly (Joe Lo Trugilo) are small-time law officers at the beck and call of Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil (Jason Bateman) — that joke never gets stale! — who in turn answers to a shadowy, high-ranking government official known to the viewers, for the film’s first 90 minutes, by her voice (Sigourney Weaver, who has a very distinctive, recognizable voice, so it’s really not at all surprising when she finally shows her face; points off for that). When Haggard and O’Reilly realize that they are pursuing an alien, they decide to overtake their superior and claim the supposed bounty on Paul’s head for themselves, “the new blood.”
An entire subplot devoted to the conversion of Ruth from an Intelligent Design-espousing Christian to a swearing and “fornicating” atheist probably could have been eliminated, as it results in a number of embarrassingly freshman-level philosophical discussions and the low-stakes sub-conflict of her father’s (never convincingly dangerous) pursuit of the group. Also, it’s not quite clear why Frost and Pegg feel that the existence of an alien with healing powers can be explained as simply a result of “evolution” when it really sounds a lot more like Jesus-magic. Anyway, some other stuff happens, also for no apparent reason, and then some credits role or something and that’s the end.
The script is not without its boons: Although Frost and Pegg do not have the firmest grasp on how Americans speak, most of their jokes do work. Rogen delivers some of the finest work of his career, transforming what could have been a jokey premise into a full-fledged, lovable character. And the film is jam-packed with various allusions to famous science-fiction films that will prove mildly diverting to nerdier audience members. However, on the whole, Paul is hardly as perceptive as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, mainly because Frost and Pegg’s observations are restricted to the clichés of movie-extraterrestrials and ignore the storytelling conventions of the genre. As a result, the architecture supporting scene after scene of, at times, hilarious broad comedy and exhilaratingly giddy, violent action sequences is rather spindly and weak. There are just too many unexplained twists and turns that seem to have been implemented only to justify a certain desired running time.
