Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have been friends and collaborators since the mid-1990s, and it’s impossible to overstate their impact as a comedic duo both in their native Britain and here in the U.S. When Simon Pegg co-created the sitcom Spaced, he wrote a part for Frost, then a struggling actor who had been waiting tables for a decade. The duo then went on to star in Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” three film parodies — most famously Shaun of the Dead — that Wright directed and co-wrote with Pegg. And decade ago, Pegg and Frost formed the production company Stolen Picture, which has brought about a film (2018’s Slaughterhouse Rulez) and a couple of TV shows.
To date, however, Pegg and Frost have only written one film together, and while it was a funny, satisfying movie that did fairly well at the box office, it remains a bit overlooked in the shadow of their other collaborations, especially those directed by Wright.
Paul is a 2011 science-fiction comedy that Pegg and Frost conceived of while filming Shaun the Dead. The comedy duo stars as a couple of British comic book nerds who venture to San Diego Comic Con and then set out on a road trip in a rented RV to see all of the UFO hotspots in southwest America. They get more than they bargained for when they meet Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien who escaped from Area 51 and needs a ride to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming so he can signal his people and leave Earth before government agents apprehend and dissect him.
Devil’s Tower, of course, was the famous spot where the aliens arrive in the Steven Spielberg science-fiction masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and that’s just one of the many, many sci-fi classics that Paul pays tribute to (and always with a joke attached). When Pegg and Frosts’ characters stop at a gas station, Paul (who must keep out of sight) blares a horn at them and shouts, “Hey! Reese’s Pieces! Yes, thank you!” requesting the famous favorite candy of E.T. And when the RV hits a bird, the guys pull over and Paul, holding the bird in his hands, brings it back to life, recreating a scene from 1984’s Starman (except in Paul, the alien immediately eats the bird afterwards). Even the three-breasted woman from Total Recall is the subject of a running joke.
The cumulative effect of all of these references and Easter eggs is that Paul reads like a huge love letter to sci-fi and its dedicated fandom. And while some of these nods are just nerdy references for the sake of having nerdy references, for the most part, the similarities are explained by Paul’s unique history. Paul isn’t a recent arrival on Earth. He crash-landed back in 1947 and since then, he’s provided a wealth of knowledge to the human race in both technology and, secretly, in popular culture. There’s even a particularly funny flashback where Paul talks to Spielberg over the phone as a consultant on E.T. (Spielberg even voices himself in the unseen cameo).
Paul’s decades on Earth also explain his personality. He’s not some wondrous, childlike fish-out-of-water like E.T. Instead, he speaks perfectly good English and is more of a laid-back slacker, wearing flip-flops and smoking cigarettes throughout the film. This is why Seth Rogen was such a perfect choice to play him.
Perhaps because of that casual energy, there is something about Paul that never quite seems to “ramp-up” in terms of its plot or its comedy. The chase itself is never all that exciting, and while the movie is fun and funny, it only occasionally does something truly laugh-out-loud hilarious. The bird gag mentioned above is one example, as is the Spielberg cameo. There are probably other examples of truly great jokes in Paul, but not many.
To be clear, Paul never gets boring. Because of Paul’s personality and the wall-to-wall pop culture references, this movie is, above all else, a good hang. It’s a bit like if Clerks featured an alien (and, strangely, fewer Star Wars references).
An even better comparison is Superbad, another good hang movie about two friends that also share a director in Greg Mottola. This might also explain what’s lacking in Paul. While Superbad’s plot about two teens trying to get laid is perfect for a chill, low-stakes, slice-of-life story, Paul, by its very nature, deals with bigger concepts. Throughout the movie, Paul’s life is supposed to be in danger, yet you never really feel like it is thanks to Mottola’s laidback, stoner filmmaking.
By contrast, even the worst of Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy (The World’s End) ramps up the stakes to life-and-death proportions incredibly successfully without ever sacrificing the slacker vibes of its protagonists. Perhaps with Wright at the helm, Paul would have been a bit more exciting and quite possibly a bit funnier, as Wright is no slouch in that department. And by virtue of being a part of a series of movies, maybe Paul would be a bit better remembered, too.
