Two British sci-fi obsessives drive an RV through the American Southwest, stop at Comic-Con, and pick up a foul-mouthed grey alien on a desert highway. That is the setup for Paul, and it is a good one.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost Take an RV Through the Desert
Paul is a 2011 science fiction comedy road film directed by Greg Mottola and written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who also star. Pegg plays Graeme Willy; Frost plays Clive Gollings. The two are best friends, comic book and sci-fi enthusiasts, and collaborators — Clive is trying to write his own sci-fi book and Graeme is illustrating it.
They travel to the United States for the annual San Diego Comic-Con, then extend the trip into a road tour of UFO sites across the Southwest. On a remote desert highway at night, after a run-in with homophobic rednecks in a diner, they accidentally crash into the rednecks’ truck and drive away. Later they watch a car drive erratically and crash. They stop to help the driver. The driver is Paul.
Seth Rogen voices Paul and provides the motion capture for the title character. Clive faints and wets his pants on seeing him. Graeme agrees to give the alien a ride anyway. That single decision sets the whole movie moving, and it is the right place for the film to put its weight. The friendship between Graeme and Clive is not a subplot here; it is the engine.
A Grey Alien Who Has Outlived His Usefulness
Paul has spent the past 60 years locked up in a top-secret military base, advising world leaders about his kind. He worries he has outlived his usefulness and that the dissection table is drawing uncomfortably close. So he escapes on the first RV that passes his compound in Area 51 — which happens to contain the two earthlings most likely to rescue and harbor an alien on the run.
He explains that the government fed his image to the public so no one would panic if anyone encountered his race. Clive stays paranoid, reading Paul’s appearance as evidence of a conspiracy. The two argue. Clive cites Mac and Me. The film’s own tagline asks: “Who’s up for a close encounter?”
Jason Bateman and the Rookies on the Trail
Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil of the Secret Service arrives at the crash site and tells his unseen female superior, known as “the Big Guy,” that he is closing in on Paul. She sends rookies Haggard and O’Reilly to assist. Jason Bateman plays Zoil; Bill Hader plays Haggard; Joe Lo Truglio plays O’Reilly. Sigourney Weaver plays “The Big Guy.”
Bateman described his character as an “exaggerated nasty guy” and based his performance on Yaphet Kotto in Midnight Run and Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. Zoil’s name is a play on the 1992 film Lorenzo’s Oil.
Weaver, in an interview with Graham Norton, said: “It’s a love letter to sci-fi fans. I jumped at the chance to be in it. To find a comedy that also pays homage to sci-fi is a dream come true.”
Ruth Buggs, Moses, and the RV Park
Graeme, Clive, and Paul camp at an RV park run by Christian fundamentalists: one-eyed Ruth Buggs and her father Moses. Kristen Wiig plays Ruth; John Carroll Lynch plays Moses. Ruth catches sight of Paul the next day and passes out, so the group brings her along.
A quarrel follows, and Paul gets Ruth to doubt what she has been taught. He also moves her blindness into his own body and then fixes it at once. When they stop at a bar, Ruth phones Moses, and Zoil listens in on the call. The rednecks corner her, and a brawl breaks out.
The supporting cast is deep and the film knows it. David Koechner plays Gus, a redneck Graeme and Clive first meet at the Little A’Le’Inn; Jesse Plemons plays his friend Jake. Blythe Danner plays Tara Walton, with Mia Stallard as young Tara. Jane Lynch plays Pat Stevens. Jeffrey Tambor plays Adam Shadowchild, a famous science fiction writer. Syd Masters appears as himself, a singing cowboy on stage. Steven Spielberg voices himself.
A Parody Built on Spielberg
Paul is a parody of other science fiction films, especially Steven Spielberg’s, and of science fiction fandom in general. Pegg and Frost conceived the idea in 2003, during production on Shaun of the Dead. In an interview for the DVD release, they said they made the film to show their love for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, along with their other favorite science fiction films.
After they mentioned the project to Spielberg, he suggested he might make a cameo, and a scene was added to include him as a voice on a speakerphone in 1980, discussing ideas with Paul for his soon-to-become box office hit E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Robert Kirkman said he, Invincible co-creator Cory Walker, and Invincible artist Ryan Ottley had a cameo as the Big Guy’s henchmen.
Double Negative, New Mexico, and the Albuquerque Convention Center
Principal photography took place mainly in the New Mexico Desert and the Albuquerque Convention Center, and wrapped in September 2009. Double Negative provided the animation for Paul.
The film had its world premiere at the Empire Leicester Square in London on 7 February 2011. Universal Pictures released it theatrically on 14 February in the United Kingdom and on 18 March in the United States. It runs 104 minutes.
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director | Greg Mottola |
| Writers | Simon Pegg, Nick Frost |
| Lead cast | Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen (voice) |
| Runtime | 104 minutes |
| Genres | Adventure, Comedy, Science Fiction |
| Premiere | 7 February 2011, Empire Leicester Square, London |
| UK release | 14 February 2011 |
| US release | 18 March 2011 |
| Budget | $40 million |
| Worldwide gross | $98 million |
What the Road Trip Actually Delivers
The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office success, grossing $98 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. That gap is the story of its commercial life, and it is not hard to see why the numbers landed where they did.
Paul works best when it stays in the RV. Pegg and Frost write themselves as fans rather than as heroes, and the movie is generous to that instinct. Graeme and Clive are not cool, and the film does not ask them to be. The jokes about fandom come from inside the house.
The weakest stretches are the chase mechanics. Zoil and the rookies exist to keep the plot moving, and Bateman is funny in the part, but the Secret Service thread never carries the same charge as the two men arguing in the front seats. The bar fight is a set piece; the argument about Mac and Me is a character scene. Only one of those is worth remembering.
- Paul has been held at a top-secret military base for 60 years, advising world leaders about his kind.
- He escapes on the first RV that passes his compound in Area 51.
- Graeme agrees to give him a ride; Clive faints and wets his pants.
- Zoil reports to “the Big Guy,” who sends Haggard and O’Reilly to assist.
- Ruth Buggs faints when she sees Paul, then travels with the group.
- Paul cures Ruth’s blind eye by transferring the condition onto himself and healing it.
The Ruth Buggs material is the film’s most interesting swing and its most uneven one. Paul talks a fundamentalist out of her beliefs, then heals her eye on the spot. It is a big, strange idea, and the movie treats it as a joke and a miracle at the same time. Wiig plays it straight, which is the correct call. Whether the film earns the moment is another question. It mostly does not, because the script moves on before the idea has room to land.
The Spielberg Cameo Is the Whole Point
The Spielberg scene is the film’s clearest statement of purpose. Pegg and Frost did not build Paul to mock the movies they grew up on. They built it to stand next to them. Putting Spielberg on a speakerphone in 1980, talking with Paul about ideas for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, is the joke and the tribute in the same beat. A parody that invites its own target to cameo has already told you what it thinks.
That instinct is why Paul holds up better than its mixed reviews suggested it would. The film is not trying to be Close Encounters. It is trying to be the movie that a pair of fans would make after watching Close Encounters a hundred times. That is a smaller ambition, and it is an honest one.
The 104-minute runtime is about right. The film does not overstay, and it does not pad. Where it stumbles, it stumbles because it keeps reaching for a plot when the two men in the RV were already enough.
Where Paul Lands
Paul is a love letter that occasionally forgets to be a comedy. The best parts are Pegg and Frost doing what they do, and Rogen’s Paul is a genuine creation — a smart-ass who has been locked up for six decades and has the attitude to show for it. The Spielberg homage is sincere, the fandom satire is affectionate, and the supporting cast is stacked with people who understand the assignment.
What holds it back is structure. The chase plot is thinner than the road trip, and the film’s biggest ideas — Ruth’s conversion, the government’s use of Paul’s image — get less room than they deserve. The group’s job is to get Paul home, and the film is at its best before that goal takes over the frame.
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