PAUL: The Film Babble Blog Review

PAUL (Dir. Greg Mottola, 2011)

STARMAN meets SUPERBAD in this sci fi comedy that has Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the comic duo from SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ, aiding and abetting an extraterrestrial fugitive voiced by Seth Rogen.

Pegg and Frost, who also co-wrote the screenplay, are a couple of British geeks on an American vacation that kicks off with a visit to Comic-Con in San Diego before making a road trip to alien landmarks from Area 51 in Nevada to Roswell, New Mexico.

There’s a FANBOYS vibe going on as the pair are starstruck at meeting fictional fantasy novelist Adam Shadowchild (Jeffrey Tambor), whose name is a running gag throughout the film – the joke being that only hardcore nerds know who he is.

Right after stereotypical rednecks (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons) harass Pegg and Frost at a U.F.O. themed diner, our protagonists meet Paul – the CGI crafted little green man from another planet.

“He looks too obvious!” Frost protests, but our snarky title character explains that it’s because pop culture has been inundated with his image in case an encounter occurs.

It turns out Paul, a pot-smoking heavy-drinking party animal of an alien, has escaped from his 60 year imprisonment at Area 51 and is on the run from a government agent (Jason Bateman playing it perfectly straight), so Pegg and Frost’s rented RV becomes his vehicle to an undisclosed location for a spaceship pick-up.

Kristen Wiig, in one of her better performances, jumps on board the RV as a half blind trailer park manager who gets converted from her crazy Christian mind set by the outspoken E.T. and is chased by her father (John Carroll Lynch). Also on the chase are SNL’s Bill Hader and the creepy Joe Lo Truglio as clueless FBI agents.

Every sci fi movie ever seems to be referenced in “Paul”. Lines are lifted from STAR WARS, locations from Star Trek to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS are visited, and then there’s the presence of Sigourney Weaver as “The Big Guy” – Bateman’s boss who will stop at nothing to recapture Paul.

It’s a film for sci fi nerds by sci fi nerds. It’s sloppy and choppy, but it has so many legitimate laughs in it that I didn’t care that it didn’t come close to the visually stylish Edgar Wright films that Pegg and Frost cut their teeth on.

PAUL is fast-paced foul-mouthed fun with an infectious silly tone that never lets up. Although you can see many of the gags coming, they’re still funny when they land thanks to the playful platform provided by Pegg, Frost, Rogen, and director Greg Mottola.

Though I don’t consider myself a STAR WARS fanatic, Trekkie, or sci-fi junkie to any extreme, my inner star-child was greatly amused by these alien antics.

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CEDAR RAPIDS Gets Ed Helms Out Of The Office

CEDAR RAPIDS (Dir. Miguel Arteta)

This new comedy is only playing in Raleigh at the Regal North Hills Stadium 14, and it’s in one of their smallest theaters. That’s a shame because it’s a winning film that’s as charming as it is lovably crude, wonderfully carried by Ed Helms (The Office, THE HANGOVER).

The straight-laced and extremely dorky Helms is a small town insurance salesman whose boss (Stephen Root) sees as the “kid who was going places, but then…didn’t.”

When hot shot salesman Thomas Lennon (The State, Reno 911) dies from auto-erotic asphyxiation, Helms is sent in his place to the annual insurance industry convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Helms, who amusingly is having a fling with his much older former elementary school teacher (a sly Sigourney Weaver), is nervous about going, especially since he’s never left his home town or been on an airplane before.

Upon leaving, Root warns Helms to stay away from John C. Reilly as a sleazy possible client poacher, and, yep, that’s who he turns out having to room with at the hotel.

Luckily his other room-mate is the more sincere Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Clay Davis from The Wire) who uses snappy phrases like L.A.C. (Loud And Clear) and “and at the end of the day that’s N.T.S. – that’s Not Too Shabby.”

There’s also the surprisingly appealing performance by Anne Heche as another convention veteran who ferociously flirts with Helms.

So our hapless hero Helms’ goal is to win the coveted 2 Diamonds Award by schmoozing insurance association president Kurtwood Smith (most likely best known as the dad on That ‘70s Show, but I prefer to think of him as the villain in the first ROBOCOP).

But Relliy’s partying antics, the temptation of Heche, and a brewing bribery scandal may thwart Helm’s path to victory.

There are a lot of laughs in CEDAR RAPIDS, most of the clever character based variety that was so missing from the raunchy-for-the-sake-of-raunch of the recent Farrelly Brothers flick “Hall Pass”.

In fact, there have been few comedy films lately that feel like they have real empathy for the people on the screen. Helms gives us a guy whose naivety we initially laugh at, but come to laugh with as the film goes on.

He comes off like a big kid, but not like man-children in the films of Judd Apatow, he’s more about the wide-eyed giddy feeling of learning things for the first time.

In this movie that giddiness is hilariously endearing, and at the end of the day that’s N.T.S.

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AVATAR: The Film Babble Blog Review

AVATAR (Dir. James Cameron, 2009)






When my brother and I were kids we would often put down the lackluster effects of many of the sci-fi films released in the wake of STAR WARS saying they looked "fakey."



Well, there's almost nothing fakey looking in AVATAR, James Cameron's long-in-the-making special effects epic in which every cent of its $250 million + budget sparkles on screen. Nearly every frame is a flawless spectacle of jaw-dropping jolts that makes last summer's STAR TREK reboot already look dated.



AVATAR is set in 2051 on a the distant moon Pandora which is inhabited by large blue humanoid life forms named the Na'vi. Human colonization of Pandora is underway with scientific studies clashing with military might over the Na'vi because they just happen to have a valuable commodity, a mineral called "Unobtainium", which is vital to the survival of Earth, of which the protagonist says "there's no green there, they killed their mother."



That protagonist is paraplegic marine (Sam Worthington) who is recruited to attempt to connect to the natives through "Avatars" - genetically engineered hybrid bodies that allow humans to breathe and co-exist in the Na'vi environment. 



Worthington loves being reborn as a CGI creation that can run, jump, and engage in fighting off the crazy alien creatures of the lush but creepy forest. Telling the Na'vi leader that he is a warrior from the "Jarhead" clan, Worthington is allowed in to their culture based on the spiritual energy of the woods around them. He falls in love with the tribe chieftain's daughter (Zoë Saldana) as he learns their ways and comes to believe that he should join them in fighting the humans who are coming to destroy their sacred Hometree for the "Unobtainium" underneath. 



"Just relax and let your mind go blank" says Sigourney Weaver as a sneering scientist also Avataring it up. Though she adds: "That shouldn't be too hard for you" to Worthington, that's good advice for the audience. 



If it isn't hard to turn one's brain off, an exhilarating visual experience can definitely be had, but if that switch remains in the "on" position, stiff dialogue, simplistic politics (army bad, nature good) and a predictable formula thread may get in the way of total transcendence. 



As a hard assed army Colonel looking to annihilate the Na'vi, Steven Lang comes off as such a standard issue war monger that I almost expected him to blast "Ride Of The Valkries" when flying in to attack on the speaker system of his highly robotized helicopter. 



Also during the ginormous concluding battle sequence I got lost in the explosions and so tired out from the bloated running time (161 minutes) that I was looking for dead Ewoks in the brush. In the end though, critical jabs at the film and Cameron's expense will do little to undermine the overwhelming technical achievement he's created.



AVATAR's amazing aesthetics make it one of the tastiest pieces of cinematic eye candy ever. So much so, that I could even let the sucky song ("I See You" by Leona Lewis) that plays over the end credits slide. 



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