Paul

A fun couple of hours on the road with Frost and Pegg, misses Wright as much as he missed them in Scott Pilgrim

The main thing that defines any film starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is that their real life friendship streams through the movie and envelopes the story with a big hug of bromance. Paul, is no exception. The subject this time is Pegg and Frost taking a road trip across America and picking up a fugitive alien, voiced by Seth Rogen.

The story follows a reasonably predictable pattern of fugitive escape movies, with different agencies getting involved as the chase grows, very much in the style of The Blues Brothers, everyone the group meet ends up chasing them.

The supporting cast almost all phone in performances, Jason Bateman as the sunglassed government agent, Bill Hader as an inept underling, Jane Lynch as a bar owner and David Koechner as a hillbilly thug. The best cameo of the film, ruined by the trailer, is worth waiting for, but there are none of the strong supporting roles which defined previous output from Frost and Pegg.

The real strength of the film comes from the central four performances from Frost and Pegg, Kristen Wiig, as a devout Christian whose faith is destroyed by the presence of the alien, and the alien himself. The writing is at its best when between these four and as with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz the best scenes come away from the action when the characters just sit and chat amongst themselves. The relationship between Frost and Pegg’s characters doesn’t flow as well as their previous work together, but still retains some of the magic we have seen before.

As you would expect with the creative talent behind this film, it is packed to the brim with alien references and half of the fun is spotting the reference points. It is a huge gamble to put such a large amount of your film into the hand of the CGI guys, but the creation of Paul is superb and with Seth Rogen giving him an air of a grizzled old-timer, the extra-terrestrial fits perfectly into the dynamic of the central group and never feels like a CGI creation.

Greg Mottola does his best with this film, but it is obviously lacking the sharp, snappy direction of Edgar Wright and a negligence of the supporting cast which Wright used to such effect in the previous output from the Spaced team. I’m by no means saying that Pegg, Frost and Wright should work on every single project together, but this film is so clearly in the same stable as Shaun and Fuzz that the lack of Wright’s style and eye leaves a slightly deflating feeling to the whole affair.

Paul is a good road movie and plays with the genre in a way we are now familiar with from this team, for a way to spend 2 hours it is funny and entertaining enough it just feels like it needed an injection of Edgar Wright to make it a slice of fried gold.

Here’s hoping they recapture the magic soon with the third in the ‘Three Flavours Cornetto’ trilogy.

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