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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Paul (Film)

by Joshua Blackman | April 11, 2011 15:31 | Edited April 11, 2011 15:33

While the abundant film references are self-indulgent and the action often unfocused, this is largely a hilarious ride boosted by brilliant comedic performances.

Star Wars. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Just the titles alone are enough to send film and sci-fi aficionados into a delirious frenzy, something that stars and co-writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost exploit with glee in their latest bromantic comedy, Paul. Despite lacking the visual energy and pointed wit of their previous pairings (Edgar Wright's Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz), Paul is geek nirvana, sure to be loved and loved-hard by a certain subset of the movie going audience.

Paul is a road movie which uproots our very English heroes from North London to the dusty Nevada desert. It's there that Graeme Willy (Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Frost) embark on a UFO pilgrimage in a lumbering RV. What they didn't count on was harbouring the fugitive, pot-smoking alien of the title (voiced by Seth Rogen in a variation on his stoner schtick from Pineapple Express), who's on the run from the FBI after fifty years of "advising" the government in UFO lore.

 

The ramshackle mayhem that ensues is unfocused but very funny, and Pegg and Frost's baggy script is bolstered by a gaggle of brilliant comedic performers, including Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Jane Lynch and Blythe Danner. Best of all is Kristen Wiig as an oddly loveable, god-fearing goofball who is transformed by her encounter with Rogen's little green man. Sigourney Weaver also has a delicious cameo as Paul's bitchy nemesis, and spends much of the film hovering just out-of frame like a Bond villain.

 

Talented director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) clearly shares his actors' love for Spielberg-style science fiction. He handles the CGI effects with skill, but the abundant film references, though loving, are ultimately self-indulgent. That the film is an often hilarious love letter to other, better films is what prevents it from forging its own identity like Edgar Wright's mini-masterpieces.