Paul (Greg Mottola)
I possess nilch sci-fi cred. I rated Shaun of the Dead as mediocre and thought Hot Fuzz was overrated by folk who felt 'liking it' was cooler than the film ever was. I didn't see Star Wars until I was twenty five. Up until Halloween last year, I'd thought Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker were the same person (I was corrected by someone dressed as Hans Solo, or was it Luke?). Then there's Jay and Silent Bob, a duo that made me want to decapitate every teenage boy I encountered throughout the early noughties. So it's difficult to review a movie that sits in a genre you know very little about. In this case sci-fi nerdzy films. However, I said I'd make an effort to charter unchartered ground at this year's GFF. And my journey has begun. That said, I posit this here posty as less of a review and more of an overview of my evening in an milieu alien to me.
So, tonight I ventured along to the launch party for Glasgow Youth Film Festival (GYFF) for the preview screening of Paul, the new Pegg-Frost flick out on Valentine's Day. Free wine, what can I say!
The night began with an introduction from the youth team, who programme and administer the entire mini-fest. They turned up clad in superhero get-up. We had Darth Vader of course!, Superman, Dangermouse and Marge Simpson, a close friend whom I recently quoted in my thesis. The teens kicked off with a giveaway for audience members sitting in seats dedicated to Dr Seusss and, err, another person... let's say Hans Solo for arguments sake. And then came a video-clip from the comedy duo themselves (not Jay and SB thankfully). Pegg and Frost apologised for not being there (of course) and provided enough kudos for GYFF to have a rather spectacled crowd go wild.
Then came the film, which opens at Comic-Con (must get along to that some day). To summarise, the story charts a road trip across the US taken by nerd Brits Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost), during which they encounter an alien, Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) who has escaped from a US military base where he's been undergoing tests for 60 years. They save the day. Alien goes home. Yada yada yada. Think ET but the bicycle is a rented RV.
But mock not. To my surprise, it was quite good. Although I didn't laugh quite as much as the chick beside me (a leg-slapper in a Ming the Merciless tee), I found myself chuckling away at a reasonably good script. Of course there were lots of in-jokes that made me feel a little alienated (sorry!), but generally I was into it. It was clever in parts. And the timing was bang on, particularly by Rogen. At some points it reminded me of absurdist theatre, those little physical funnies (mild Slapstick) that are either totally lost or exhausted to hell in film. They of course overdo the 'no homo' card and I believe the word 'balls' got far too many giggles from a late-teen crowd, but hey, I suppose balls are actually quite funny, particularly alien balls. And a predictable, but rightly so, climax! After several references to Predator throughout, who else should be revealed as the ultimate villain whose voice we'd only heard so far? Sigourney Weaver of course!. Luckily she gets squished by Paul's bulb-headed buddies, and it's smiles all-round.
Overall, a good night and a decent film, but the best part of the evening was the vocal audience. Sometimes arthouse cinema can be a little too sober, so it was a joy to see a little life injected into the space. And of course, I did get to see some real aliens on Sauchiehall Street afterwards.
Filmdocta prescribes 3 stars
Apologies for the plethora of puns.
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