Today's Cinema Sunday is going to look at a quirky sci-fi comedy that came out a few years ago called "Paul".
Paul has the big head, bulbous eyes and gangly body we commonly associate with alien anatomy in modern science fiction. Paul says that's not a coincidence. Seems the government is OK with letting this image get leaked out to the public via movies, TV shows and comic books; if anyone ever actually sees an alien, the assumption will be the alien is a fake from some kind of movie, TV show or comic book.
Paul has been cooling his heels in a US black site for about 60 years but its time to go home. During those 60 years, Paul has learned English (including a prolific use of the word "fuck") and a lot of pop culture minutiae as well as picking up a bad cigarette smoking habit. He also has a snarky wit that allows him to call bullshit on a lot of human hang ups about sex and religion.
Again, fate and circumstances conspire to have someone else join Graeme, Clive and Paul in their RV journey, a one eyed woman named Ruth (Kristen Wigg) who has led a sheltered life under the domineering watch of her religious fundamentalist father. The mere fact of Paul's existence challenges everything that Ruth's religious indoctrination has taught her about how to world works. Her faith gets a severe blow when Paul uses his alien powers to heal Ruth's injured eye.
As the gang make their way to rendezvous with the mothership that will take Paul back home, they are being pursued. Ruth's father is determined to recover his daughter from these heathens. Also, FBI agents are in pursuit as well. Special Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman), reporting to an unseen female superior, is following Paul.
This same superior also sends to two rookie agents, Haggard (Bill Hader) and O'Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio...yep, Charles Boyle from Brooklyn Nine Nine) to "assist" Zoil even as the two agents are not quite in the loop that the target of the chase is an alien. They're not bright but they know something weird is going on.
"Paul" was released in 2011 but I didn't see it until I caught it on TV a couple of years ago.
What struck me about "Paul" is that it is a surprisingly amiable comedy. Graeme and Clive are not just there for easy jokes at the expense of geek culture. Lots of sci-fi tropes and homages drive this movie but this is a movie that love and respects the source material on which "Paul" is built.
The character of Paul does what aliens do best in science fiction, provide that "outside looking in" perspective on humanity. Paul says things about us as humans that we perhaps have trouble saying about ourselves.
There's a lot of "I know that guy" in this movie. When I saw that one of the FBI agents was Charles from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I thought that was so cool. And if the voice of unseen FBI superior sounds like Sigourney Weaver, that's because it is Sigourney Weaver (no stranger to sci-fi in the "Aliens" franchise). Hell, Blythe Danner is in this thing and Steve Spielberg as an audio cameo.
While I did not see "Paul" when it was first released, I do have a story about the movie when it was originally in theaters.
My wife, daughter and I were in line to purchase tickets to something or another. There was a man with a young girl in front of us. (I'm guessing divorced dad with weekend custody of this daughter.) He asked for two tickets to see "Paul". The ticket person seeing the young girl reminds the man that the movie is R rated.
The man inquires, "Are there any naked boobies?"
The ticket person advises the rating is mostly for language. ("Fuck" gets said a lot, especially by Paul.)
The man replies, "As long as there ain't no naked boobies, we'll be fine." And he buys his tickets.
I can imagine how that went down when the girl was taken back home to her mom.
"What did you and daddy do today?"
"We saw a movie about a funny alien and I learned a NEW word!"
Well, the main thing is she didn't see any naked boobies.
Stay safe and remember to be good to one another.
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