With the trailer looking only vaguely funny and a general groan from people when you mention Nick Frost and Simon Pegg’s Paul, expectations of the DVD were fairly low. However, Paul is amusing throughout, has a very cool location setting in and around the ET highway in Nevada and if you’re an ultimate alien geek you’ll probably appreciate the film even more.
It’s not a complex storyline, although there are a couple of surprises. Two sci-fi fans, Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg – The World’s End) and Clive Gollings (Nick Frost – Attack the Block, Cuban Fury), go to the Comic-Con convention in San Diago. After the event they drive off in their massive RV to start an epic aliens encounter journey taking in Extraterrestrial Highway, the Black Mailbox, Area 51 and Roswell New Mexico. However, on the way they run into an alien called Paul, played by Seth Rogen (The Green Hornet) and have to put all their plans on hold to help him get back home.
Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) is one of the best additions to the cast as the brilliantly named, hard-as government operative, Lorenzo Zoil. His introduction is one of the funniest moments of the DVD and his interaction with fellow government agents, O’Reilly (Joe Truglio) and Haggard (Bill Hader), work pretty well. Kristen Wiig (Adventureland) plays the highly religious, Ruth Buggs, who joins the journey when she discovers Paul in the RV. Her swearing scenes are class.
One of the best parts of the film is the array of science fiction references littered throughout it. Theme tunes, old sci-fi movie lines and scenes as well as the implication that Paul came up with E.T. and Fox Mulder makes for good viewing, but we’ll leave you to pick them all out, because there’s a whole lot of them.
Overall Paul is an OK watch, but the reason we think that it falls short of being immense is that it was just a bit restrained, trying to cater for too many different audiences, so it comes out as being a bit watered down. There are a couple of moments where things break loose though, like in the end scene where Kristen Wiig and Jane Lynch, who plays the waitress in the Little A’Le’Inn, have a random conversion of mutual appreciation, but for the most part the comic dialogue is fairly contained.
The Paul Probed 2 disc DVD edition of the movie contains an extended version of the film with an extra 6 minutes of action to look forward to. There’s also a number of extras including commentary with Director Greg Mottola of Superbad fame, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, a raft of outtakes, the making of Paul feature, Simon Pegg silly faces and the evolution of the little alien, so there are a lot thrown in for good measure, which makes the DVD a much better prospect than if it was just the movie.
Paul DVD review: 3.4/5
