Pegg, Frost Mix Satire with Sci-Fi in ‘Paul’

When you get right down to it, “Paul” is a movie that shares a kinship with “Meet the Spartans” and “Vampires Suck.” While there’s a lot more to admire here than in those two duds, it cycles through so many movie references that it’s easy to lose count of how many parodies turn up in the form of classic sci-fi dialogue: There’s that line from “Star Wars” Harrison Ford has when he shoots an intercom that made for “boring conversation anyway,” and the choice words Sigourney Weaver had for the beast in “Aliens” who kept chasing the little girl to “get away from her, you bitch.” (Weaver steals the show in a cameo that puts her on the receiving end of that line, as a matter of fact.) The film might’ve gone too far when it broke out Dan Aykroyd’s “mission from God” line in “The Blues Brothers,” though.

Of course, such lines are mere ornaments for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s wacky script, one that begs them to flesh out its two principal characters themselves. Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) are British fan boys who come to America for Comic-Con and stay for a trip across UFO hotspots, leading all the way to Area 51. There’s a change of plans, though, when they come across Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a CGI alien fleeing from a political femme fatale (Weaver) and an agent (Jason Bateman) she hires to find him. You’d think happening upon two other agents (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) might help the hunt go faster, but with a runtime of 104 minutes, you can tell that “Paul” is one of those films that keeps bad guys at bay with one close call after the next. It’ll be a while before the conservative-Christian love interest (Kristen Wiig) opens her heart, too.

If the story seems uninspired, at least “Paul” has a cast that knows how to get a laugh, particularly Hader in a limited but funny role as one of Bateman’s tagalong dimwits. Even Jane Lynch’s fleeting cameo as a waitress adds to the overall joke, and heartily enforces the world these characters live in.

It’s a world the cast can comprehend better than director Greg Mottola, who could’ve approached this with the same raw energy he brought to “Superbad” but blew it with the bleak moderation that crippled “Adventureland.” Although “Paul” still manages to be worthwhile, there’s no reason why a film about a silly space oddity should endure this much gravity.

This article originally appeared on AllMediaNY.com