I shall start by stating that I am very much a fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz entertain me greatly and even Frost's brief comedy fact show, Danger: 50,000 Volts was very amusing. They do knowing comedy very well and the laughs are often very slight and offhand, distilling consistent giggles and flat out laughing fits.
Unfortunately, very little of this is found in Paul. In fact, the one actor who I often find to be irritating (Seth Rogan) turned out to be the funniest thing in the film. For a movie spanning over an hour and a half, I laughed no more the 3 times. Something of a handicap for a film billed as a comedy. The sorry thing is that the principals almost seem half-hearted. Pegg somehow manages to be irritating (something I honestly never though possible), and Frost fails to be funny in any way at all. Many of the jokes are repetitive and lack humour to begin with, eg: a devout catholic woman discovering she's allowed to swear for the first time gains a chuckle in the first instance but every line she delivers after is littered with deliberately awkward profanity that is old after the third utterance. The rookie, dorky FBI agents are also unbearable at times, with lines that are supposed to be funny falling flat with lacklustre delivery.
It's a weak effort all round. The film just meanders from Point A to B without any real spark. My friend and fellow film geek, Mr David Camp, rightly blamed the lack of any input from usual collaborator Edgar Wright. At least then there'd be an energy to the sub-par material.
2/5
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