Paul - nerd-tastic

The trailer for 'Paul' was very annoying. It opened with a clip of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost telling me to go to the cinema more, then advertising Odeon stuff. Thanks guys, definitely not selling out there. The trailer made the film itself look like a slapstick bromance in which Simon Pegg's credibility as a comedy writer would be further diluted. It also revealed something that happens quite close to the end of the film and would have made for a nice surprise had it remained a secret.

Suffice to say I went into the cinema yesterday with lowered expectations. Everything Simon Pegg has done without Edgar Wright on board as director has been below par at best. It's nice to be proved wrong sometimes though, and it turned out that 'Paul' was a fine comedy that retained a lot of the geeky film-obsessive referential stuff that Pegg and Frost have built a fanbase up by exploiting.

In case you don't know, 'Paul' is about two English nerds (Pegg and Frost) who go on a road trip of discovery in America and stumble across an Alien called Paul. Paul is on the run from the Men in Black and asks them to help him get home. Cue slapstick, comedy wordplay, science fiction, comic book geekiness and a refreshing amount of anti-bible rhetoric. And also film references. You could write an essay of the films referenced in 'Paul', and it were these that kept me laughing loudest. Close Encounters, Aliens, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Titanic and Back to the Future are the ones that come to mind now - with my favourite being the Aliens reference towards the end (no spoilers from me there hopefully).

Seth Rogan is perfectly cast as the voice of the slacker alien Paul (never thought I'd put the words "Seth Rogan" and "perfectly cast" in the same sentence), his semi-stoned drawl keeps the comedy moving along nicely for the whole film. Pegg and Frost are their usual selves, I would literally watch anything that they'd written and starred in.

In conclusion, I was certainly surprised by 'Paul'. Surprised by quite how much I laughed, surprised by the number of science fiction in jokes (not hinted at what-so-ever in the trailers) and most of all surprised by the mainstream appeal the film managed to retain in spite of all the geekiness. It's another win for Pegg and Frost, now when's the last of the Cornetto trilogy coming out?