PAUL: I’ve Been Waiting for This Since Mac and Me

Paul (2011) – Directed by Greg Mottola – Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Blythe Danner, Joe Lo Truglio, John Carroll Lynch, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Sigourney Weaver, Jeffrey Tambor, and Steven Spielberg.

Much like Super 8, PAUL is a love letter to Steven Spielberg, but unlike the J.J. Abrams film, PAUL isn’t a celebration of Spielberg’s films as much as it is a celebration of what the films meant to fans.

We see this in evidence right from the start as Greame (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost) make their first pilgrimage to Sand Diego Comic-Con. These guys are fans and I appreciate how they’re fans without an over-fetishization of geek or nerd culture, which is a trend that has pretty much run its course. They are who they are, definitely fans but also definitely themselves, too. Clive is a writer and Graeme is an artist, and they’re not just visiting from England to experience SDCC, but to take a road trip through some alien hot spots in the American West.

We stay in San Diego just long enough to establish that these two guys love their sci-fi, and then they’re off in an RV. At a roadside diner where Jane Lynch works, Graeme laughs along with two redneck stereotypes (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons), who decide to interpret his joviality as hostile instead of friendly. When Clive comes out of the bathroom, the two rednecks make fun of Graeme and Clive for being gay.

Which they’re not, but which is also a recurring joke in the film.

Graeme and Clive hightail it out of there and accidentally put a dent in the rednecks’ truck on their way out of the parking lot. Later on that night, as they stop to take some pictures at another sight on their stop, they see some approaching headlights and wrongly assume its the rednecks. Fleeing the scene, they are quickly overcome by the headlights, and as the car whizzes past, the car wrecks and the boys stop to have a look.

The rednecks are the worst part of the film because they are never anything but their base stereotypes. Many of PAUL’s conflict are derived from pitting different social groups against each other: nerds, rednecks, the deeply religious, the bad ass Mr. FBI Man, but only the rednecks never reveal themselves to be something more. Luckily, despite their introduction as the film’s first antagonist, they are not major players in the movie.

At the scene of the accident, the two Brits meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), who solicits their help in him getting home. Grame proves himself the cooler customer, more willing to accept an actual alien in their presence, while Clive passes out and pees himself. From there on, we’ve got a combo buddy comedy/road trip with Paul the alien as the third wheel tag-along.

Paul is designed to be a mid-sized alien with very human tendencies: he likes to smoke and drink and swear, and there are times where this gets a bit much. There is some over-reliance on the comedy coming simply from Paul doing these things, as if an alien who swears is, in and of itself, inherently funny. Maybe if this film had come out in 1987, this would have worked, but now it already feels kinda stale – if Paul is intended to be funny, he needs to be funny irregardless of being a little grey alien with big blue eyes.

The most interesting aspect of this film is simply watching two different comedy camps come together. Up front is the Pegg and Frost duo as PAUL’s main stars and it’s co-writers, and in less-obvious roles are part of the Arrested Development family in the persons of director Greg Mottola, and actors Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor. It’s a winning combo, with the deadpan-jerk humor of Bateman and Tambor blending nicely with the disbelieving-nice guys style of Pegg and Frost.

There is a third wheel here and that’s the inclusion of Seth Rogen as the voice of Paul. Mottola has a history with the Apatow/Rogen family, too, as he also directed Superbad and was a director on Undeclared, so Rogen isn’t completely alone here. Personally, I’ve had my fill of Rogen’s Big Loud Idiot type, and even though Paul doesn’t entirely fit that mold, Rogen’s voice keeps pushing the character in that direction. It’s hard to think of Paul as either intelligent or likable with that awful voice coming out of his mouth, but it’s certainly not enough to sink the character or the film.

Graeme, Clive, and Paul pull the RV into an RV park for the night, where they meet Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a one-eyed, over-protected daughter of a religious zealot. PAUL takes all kinds of shots at God and religion and Paul becomes the (celebrated) serpent in the Garden. When Ruth starts espousing her faith (and it’s not like she says, “I like Jesus,” because she actually says, “The world is 4,000 years old and God created it in six days.”) Paul loses his marbles and starts debating her from inside the RV’s bathroom, even though he’s supposed to be hiding. Paul ends up getting Ruth to turn away from her faith, in part because he shows her his entire life story through a mind link and in part because he cures her dead eye.

I have some issues with this – not as a Christian, because even though I was raised Catholic I don’t consider myself aligned with any religion these days, but just as a matter of logic. Simply because the Bible does not take aliens into account does not mean that their existence disproves the concepts of God and Creationism. I suppose the point here is that because Ruth is such a strict Christian that Paul’s ability to show her that the world is more than 4,000 years old becomes the crack that breaks the dam. It’s simplistic, but it fits the film’s general theme, which is that the group dynamic is more important than an individual’s personal issues.

I really like how PAUL picks up people as the film moves along. First, the road trip is about Graeme and Clive’s adventure, then it’s folds in the plot in getting Paul home, and then when Ruth is added, it folds in a subplot of self-discovery. It’s a really good script that’s only sidelined (like most comedies) by a weak joke here and there. The nice thing, however, is that PAUL is every bit as interested in telling a story as it is in simply telling jokes.

There’s plenty of nods to Spielberg (and the director’s voice even makes an appearance), but the funniest reference is when Clive (who feels like he’s blown it by passing out and peeing himself when he first met Paul) is trying to explain his actions to Paul and he says, “I’ve been waiting for this since Mac and Me and I feel like I’ve blown it!”

Mac and Me.

It’s a great reference because Mac and Me is widely recognized as a cheap E.T. knock off, yet that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who like the movie, which furthers strengthens the idea that Graeme and Clive are just regular fans.

It’s the combination of sci-fi love, camaraderie, and jokes that work better because they’re amusing rather than because they’re laugh out loud funny. I mean, how can you not like a movie that sees Clive referring to Paul as Short Round? PAUL hits all the right notes for a good time. It’s not hysterical (except for Jason Bateman, who’s very, very funny here), but it is constantly amusing.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: I’ll Not Be Doubted by Some Pipsqueak Tuft of Ginger and His Irritating Dog

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) – Directed by Steven Spielberg – Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Tony Curran, and Toby Jones.

I don’t have much history with Hergé’s Tintin, so I come to this movie rather clean – no preconceived notions, no emotional history, no expectations of any kind. I have so little history with the character that if you had shown me a picture of Tintin, I could have told you his name, I could have told you he was a Hergé creation, and … that’s it. I knew so little about Tintin that I didn’t know the name of his dog. I didn’t even know Tintin was a journalist. Heck, I didn’t even know he was an adult; I thought he was a 15-year old kid or something.

So, yeah. I’m rather blank on this topic.

That said, it’s hard not to get excited about a project that features the combined talents of Steven Spielberg (director), Peter Jackson (producer), and Steven Moffat (co-writer), especially when all three men have plenty of other projects on their creative plates. Since they’re working with an established property, it’s a pretty easy leap to see that this project must have been a labor of love for them.

And that’s really what ADVENTURES OF TINTIN feels like to me – a love letter to a character and series. (Hergé and his drawing of Tintin even make an appearance in the film’s opening scene.) TINTIN is a beautifully rendered film and a completely satisfying adventure about a journalist (Jamie Bell) and his sidekick dog (his name is Snowy) who track down a missing treasure. What I love about the movie is how it manages to feel both large and small at the same time. For all of the globe-trotting and treasure hunting, it’s also a simple story about a dude and his dog who get caught up in something beyond what they had ever anticipated would come from buying a model of a 17th century ship at an outdoor market.

Tintin buys the model of the Unicorn and instantly one man (Barnaby, an FBI agent is disguise) tells him to get rid of it and another man, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), offers to buy it from him at any price. There’s no reason for Tintin to keep the model other than he likes it, but the efforts of these two men make him realize there’s something unique about the model. He takes it home to study it, but the ship is broken when Snowy and an interloping cat get in a tussle and tear through the apartment. A small metal cylinder falls out of one of the broken masts, but Snowy isn’t able to get Tintin to see it and it slides under a dresser.

After heading to the library to do research (with Snowy in tow) on the ship, Tintin returns home to find the model stolen and his apartment ransacked. Tintin’s response is to do the pure boy adventurer move – he goes to Marlinspike Hall, the country estate of Captain Haddock, the former captain of the Unicorn. There’s a great bonding scene between Snowy and the estate’s guard dog which allows Tintin to break into the estate, and once inside he is set upon by the estate’s butler and Sakharine. Tintin sees a model of the Unicorn and assumes it’s his, but then Sakharine reminds him that his model was broken, while the one before him is in perfect condition.

Upon returning home, Snowy is finally able to get Tintin to look under the dresser, where he finds the cylinder. Inside the cylinder is an actually a rolled-up parchment that contains a clue to a missing treasure. The FBI agent returns but gets shot by unseen assailants, and Tintin gets kidnapped and brought about Sakharine’s ship. The best part of this sequence is Snowy’s determination to not let the kidnappers get out of sight, and the loyal dog ends up sneaking about the ship and helping Tintin escape and partaking in the adventure.

On the ship, Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), who’s kept in a state of permanent drunkeness in order to all Sakharine full run of the ship. A whole slew of adventures happen after this – on the ship, in a boat, on a plane, in the desert, on the docks … it all moves swiftly and effortlessly as Sakharine and Tintin compete to find the third model of the Unicorn for the final piece of the riddle. There’s an historical parallel at play in TINTIN: Haddock is the descendant of the original Captain Haddock, who sunk his ship so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of Red Rackham, who just so happens to be Sakharine’s ancestor. Eventually, Sakharine is captured and Tintin and Haddock find a part of the sunken treasure in Marlinspike Hall, and agree to keep looking for the rest, setting up a sequel that Peter Jackson has said he wants to direct.

ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is a wonderful film, fun and fanciful, full of life, energy, and brilliant color. TINTIN is Spielberg’s first animated movie (though he shot much of the film using motion capture), but the world he (and the digital artists at WETA) create is alive and beautiful. While I didn’t read the TINTIN stories as a kid, it feels familiar to the stories I did read. The adventure narrative is preposterous but the characters are grounded, and because they feel real it’s easy to follow along with them on this crazy ride. Despite all the darkness at play in the film with the near-constant threat of violence, a wondrous sense of optimism and permeates the movie.

I’ll be buying TINTIN for the collection and I’m already looking forward to Jackson’s sequel.

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK: From Capitalist to Naturalist in Four Years

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – Directed by Steven Spielberg – Starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vanessa Lee Chester, Arliss Howard, Pete Postlethwaite, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff, Peter Stormare, Harvey Jason, Thomas F. Duffy, and Richard Attenborough.

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Water seeks its own level, and eventually, films do, as well.

I hated THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK when it came out. I loved the original film’s mix of wonder and thrills, and so it is perhaps not surprising that I wasn’t as taken with THE LOST WORLD’s darker tone, lesser characters, simpler philosophy, and Vince Vaughn.

Time allows for a reconsideration, of course, and 15 years on, my dislike of THE LOST WORLD has cooled enough that I’ve become much more neutral on the film. I can appreciate what Spielberg is attempting here and there are parts of LOST WORLD that I outright like. The film is not without significant deficiencies, however, in terms of story, character, and philosophy.

I’ll say this right from the start – this is probably going to turn out to be one of those reviews that I don’t really like to write, in that there’s going to be a lot more focus on the negative than the positive. I wrote this same kind of review the other day when I tackled THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, and there’s a lot of similarities between that film and this one in terms of my overall reaction. Both films are perfectly fine time wasters and both can serve a point – if you loved the first two MUMMY movies (like I did), where else are you gonna go to see these characters or even that kind of story? Similarly, if you love dinosaurs, where else are you gonna go to get better dino action than the JURASSIC PARK franchise?

Whatever problems there are with LOST WORLD, it’s not the dinosaurs. In fact, the combined work of Industrial Light & Magic’s CGI dinos and Stan Winston’s animatronic creatures are individually at the top of their fields and work together beautifully. If you’re a fan of film production, of the art of making movies, then LOST WORLD is a must-see just to appreciate ILM and Stan Winston’s work. And after you’ve watched the movie, do yourself a favor and check out the bonus features; it’s truly gratifying to see people at the top of their respective (and partially competitive) fields working so well together. And that’s to say nothing of the sound technicians who give the dinos such wonderful vocal qualities.

All of which is to say that, production wise, LOST WORLD is high quality entertainment. The dinosaurs look fantastic whether they’re being shot from far away or interacting up close with the humans. There’s a fantastic scene between Julianne Moore and a baby Stegosaurus, and in the bonus features she credits Winston with creating an actual being for her to interact with, making her job easier, and you can see it in the film. The baby dino is all blinking eyes and cuteness, and it’s easy to see how Moore’s character would be drawn in by the baby.

Now, let’s get to the negatives.

The premise of LOST WORLD is a decent enough set-up: John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has spent the four years between JURASSIC PARK and now going from capitalist to naturalist. He reveals to Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) that there’s a “Site B” on Isla Sorna that the Ingen board wants to strip and monetize. Hammond wants the island preserved and believes the only way for him to save the island is to win the public relations battle, so he wants to send a small expedition to the island to take pictures.

Ian wants no part of this endeavor, in large part because he’s spent the last four years being ridiculed for writing a book about what happened in the first film. Hammond, however, has a secret weapon: Malcolm’s girlfriend Sarah Harding (Moore) is the paleontologist Hammond has chosen, and Sara’s already on the island. Malcolm decides he’s going to go (of course) to get her back, and so he joins equipment expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) and documentarian Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) on what he sees as a rescue mission and they still see as Hammond’s PR expedition.

Here’s where the trouble starts: Malcolm has a daughter, Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester), who seems like a perfectly fine kid with a horrible dad, and you just know she’s going to stow away in one of the vehicles and stick around for the entire movie.

Two problems arise at this point in the film. First, our sarcastic, skirt-chasing mathematician philosopher has been entirely de-fanged in the years between films, and we’re left with a broken, frightened worrier boyfriend/husband. It makes perfect narrative sense, of course, but it puts a drag on the film. If LOST WORLD had balanced Malcolm’s descent with another character’s ascent, this would be all well and good, but the film doesn’t do this. I suppose it tries with Nick, but Vaughn is completely miscast as this secret environmentalist warrior and he spends the bulk of the film looking completely out of place.

Second, we’ve got a kid mucking up the film. Unlike Tim and Lex (Joseph Mazello and Ariana Richards, who make a brief appearance during Malcolm’s visit to see Hammond), Kelly doesn’t add anything to the film. I figured she was here so the film can replicate the Grant/Tim and Lex subplot of a man who doesn’t like kids warming to them, but Ian is such a bad parent and the danger starts so quickly that there’s no arc here at all.

Which brings us to the single largest problem with LOST WORLD: the third act comes out of nowhere.

So, act one, everyone gets to the island and sees that Ingen has sent a bunch of professional hunters. Act two has the two camps forced to work together to try and get off the island, and then act three …

In act three, Ingen puts a Tyrannosaurus Rex and its child on a boat and sends it to San Diego where Spielberg can indulge in his Godzilla fantasies.

It works as a visual experience but it fails the narrative because it jettisons everyone but Malcolm, Sarah, and Hammond’s nephew/Ingen usurper Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard). The film front the Malcolm/Kelly subplot but then when they get to the island, Kelly just gets in the way of the action, and then when we get to the final act, she’s completely missing. In the bonus features, Spielberg says he came up with this ending on the fly, that he felt it’s what the audience wanted and needed to see, and he’s right that it’s fun to see, but he didn’t fully take into account what this new ending did to the story he’d spent the previous 90 minutes constructing.

The philosophical angle in LOST WORLD is also a let down. In the first film the question was whether or not you should do something, but here it’s a simplistic “hunters/observers” dynamic and it’s completely clear that the observers are in the right. The hunters are cartoonishly drawn, and while Pete Postlethwaite does his best to play a convincing Great White Hunter, the character never really works. It’s a shame because Roland Tembo actually has the most significant character arc in the film, as he eventually loses his taste for his killing life and turns his back on Ludlow’s offer to come to work for Ingen full-time.

Tembo is a secondary character, however, and the focus is on Malcolm, Sarah, and Nick. Sarah works rather well, but it’s a bit grating to see Malcolm as such a wet blanket, completely grating every time Nick is on screen, and there’s no real arc for any of them.

The action scenes are good but not great. The film’s main scene is a redo of the iconic T-Rex/Explorer scene from the previous film, except with a bigger vehicle and two Tyrannosaurs. It’s not bad, but it goes on way too long and having Kelly along just so she can be sidelined makes me wonder what Spielberg’s ultimate intent with this character was supposed to be. If you want a darker film, fine, but embrace that darkness and keep the kid at home.

On the whole, THE LOST WORLD isn’t a great movie but it’s a perfectly fine watch. The dinosaurs are fantastic, the story is okay, and the ending is fun to watch even if it sidelines some of the characters. Spielberg feels like he’s on cruise control, but he’s still Spielberg and he can still keep things moving. While LOST WORLD is disappointing compared to JURASSIC PARK – there’s just not much hopeful or awe-inspiring here, at all – it’s a semi-enjoyable watch.

LOST WORLD is darker and more simplistic, but it’s still got all those amazing dinosaurs to look at, and that ain’t a bad way to help you consume a bowl of popcorn.

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JURASSIC PARK Review Index

JURASSIC PARK: We’re Gonna Make a Fortune with This Place
THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK: From Capitalist to Naturalist in Four Years
JURASSIC PARK III: This How You Play God