In “Paul,” a new comedy directed by Greg Mottola and starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and the voice of Seth Rogan, two British geeks attend the annual Comic Con in San Diego and then set off on a road trip to see the UFO sites.
And then pick up a hitch hiking alien named Paul.
It seems that Paul, a short gray dude has been on Earth for more than 60 years, ever since he crashed he space ship and has been a guest of the U.S. government. Having come to the belief that there are now orders to dissect him and take his stem cells, he has decided to go on the lam and try to signal his alien compadres to take him home. He needs the two British geeks and their RV to do it.
Of course, Paul is being pursued by a group of bungling Men in Black who report to someone called “the Big Guy” (she is a woman the movie going will recognize) who is very irate that Paul is on the run. Naturally the three pick up all sorts of assorted red necks and others who want to run them down and take them out too,
“Paul” is also an excuse to stuff into a single movie just about every pop culture reference from SF movies from the late 1970s and 1980s as one can manage. Indeed, it seems that Paul has worked as an uncredited consultant for a variety of SF shows, including “ET: The Extraterrestrial” and “The X Files.”
“Paul” is a lot of fun, but with two caveats.
The first is that there is a lot of cursing, albeit sometimes for comedic effect. That and Paul’s use of tobacco products has given the film an R rating, so keep that in mind when considering taking the rug rats to see the movie about the cute alien.
The second is that the film not only trashes Christians, but absolutely does not get them. Early in the movie, out fugitives accidentally kidnap a comely young woman named Ruth who is so fanatically Christian that she wears a t shirt of Jesus shooting Charles Darwin. She also has an eye condition that Paul fixes, which is something of an underlying symbolism of the metaphor for causing the blind to see.
First, how is it that Hollywood always casts people of faith in the crudest of stereotypes? Ruth’s father, for instance, carries a Bible and a shot gun, suggesting that peace and goodwill toward men, especially men who make away with his daughter, is the furthest thing from his mind.
Second, the movie doesn’t get the stereotype correct. Creationists pretty much accept the commonly understood cosmology. They believe that the Earth is six thousand, not four thousand years old. And they do not believe in Intelligent Design, which is an attempt to reconcile evolution with creation. Get it right, people.
Naturally when Paul reveals the secrets of the universe, Ruth drops her faith like a live hand grenade and decides she wants to cuss (which she does badly) and fornicate (yeah!) There is too much of the former and not enough of the latter on screen.
Source: Paul, Yahoo Movies
