Until Attack the Block came out earlier this year, there was a paucity of British, alien-centric films. Monsters, a 2010 film written and directed by Gareth Edwards, seems to be the best reviewed, but there’s nothing really to gauge it against for the fifty years prior.
This is one of the many things that make Paul so fascinatingly entertaining. Admittedly, director Greg Mottola of 2010 film that pays tribute to both science-fiction films and pokes fun at America’s fascination with them, something that is doubly apparent given that we have a UFO Heartland that stretches from Roswell (complete with International UFO Museum) to Area 51. (If perchance you desire a closer look at potential life from other planets, a complete listing of hotspots, restaurants, and lodgings is available in William J. Birnes’ Aliens in America: A UFO Hunter’s Guide to Extraterrestrial Hotspots Across the U.S.)
That said, Paul introduces us to two comic-book geeks, Graeme (Simon Pegg), an illustrator adept at drawing three-breasted women, and Clive (Nick Frost), the an aspiring comic-book author. Both men are on a pilgrimage to Comic Con and an adventure through America’s most notorious alien territories. Shortly after their trek begins, they encounter a maniacal driver speeding along a dark desert highway before flipping his car into a ditch – but what can we expect from a three-foot-tall alien who can barely reach the pedals?
After relaying his tale of deceit and imprisonment, Paul convinces Graeme (Clive has passed out at this point) to let him hitchhike along with them in their RV to a place where he can get a lift back home from the mother ship. Being a huge fan, Graeme agrees, and they pile themselves and the passed out Clive into the vehicle.
The initial story here is basic, and it mirrors other films like Men in Black, E.T., and Cocoon; the main difference is Paul. He is not the stereotypical movie alien that is either innocuous and genial or malevolent and ill-intentioned. Rather, he’s more human that alien: sarcastic, congenial, endearing, pissy, rude, sentimental, and carnivorous. And, this is why Paul is a solid ride and one of the most overlooked films of last year: it offers a potential answer to our obsession with alien films.
If Paul is more like us than we wish to imagine, what does that suggest about our attraction to the notion of extraterrestrials? In one sense, we want them to be vicious so we can take the upper hand and revel in our benevolence by driving them out with brute force to save the globe a la Independence Day, Alien. In contrast, we often frame them as the more-benevolent of beings that can teach us a thing or two about life like in Cocoon. Both scenarios serve as allegories for our existence and actions, but the aliens are hardly complex like Paul. Sure, their weapons and ships are often more advanced than ours, but the characters themselves are not. Most often, they exist to illustrate our strengths or flaws, but rarely do they mirror our condition. We’re always a bit better or worse than they are.
Throughout the film, there are a number of shots at government nefariousness, religion, faith, self-worth, and various other thematic tropes. At the same time, the strongest part might be the inclusion of various tributes to canonical science-fiction films – and Jaws, which I’m still trying to figure out. (Admittedly, it’s a great film, but the only connection to science-fiction is its connection to Spielberg. Either way, “smile you son of a bitch!”) Within the narrative, these diffused tributes are woven cleverly and sort of explained as deriving from a plan by the United States government: the reason why Paul looks like a stereotypical alien is because the government and media have been strategically disseminating cartoonized images of little green men onto lunch boxes, t-shirts, and into movies for decades to prepare humans just in case dozens of space crafts decided to land – this way, we wouldn’t be scared shitless. On the same train of logic, wouldn’t Richard Dreyfuss’ initial reaction in Close Encounters be governmentally shaped, and thus, wouldn’t anyone who was a fan of that film react in a similar manner? (See Graeme and Clive.)
In the end, Paul is probably the best of the American-based alien films of last year, primarily because it starts on a tangent that would have been created had E.T. stolen a government car as the S.W.A.T. team surrounded the house, and then works its way through a number of scenarios and Star Wars-cantina-themed cafes and bars until finally reaching a mother ship momentarily impeded by Sigourney Weaver, but she’s playing the antithesis of Ripley, who never appeared in Close Encounters.
