Review #1,273: 'The Year Of Living Dangerously' (1982)

Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously is now an Australian classic and, along with the likes of Panic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, helped establish Weir as a film-maker to watch our for and eased his inevitable transition to Hollywood. Living Dangerously may now be a more obviously flawed film in 2017 than it was back in '82, but it still retains a sense of raw power stemming from an uncanny sense of place and danger. The setting is Indonesia, 1965, and President Sukarno's grasp on power is quickly fading. It's the eve of his overthrowing by the military and the communist purge that quickly followed, and journalists in Jakarta huddle in sweaty bars, feeding on scraps thrown to them by Sukarno, knocking back beers and chasing tail to pass the time.

The last guy left in a hurry, so young Australian foreign correspondent Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) arrives in Jakarta without a single informant or friend to lean on. The diplomats and fellow journalists who inhabit the same bar every night take no pity on him, but sympathetic Chinese-Australian dwarf named Billy Kwan sees something in the handsome, chain-smoking young man and decides to help him. Kwan believes strongly in Sukarno, the President his own people has dubbed the 'Puppet Master' due to his ability to keep the peace between the Communist Party and the military, and that he will save his poverty-stricken people from starvation. As well as setting up a key interview for the young journalist, he also introduces Hamilton to Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), a beautiful assistant working for the British embassy. As the conflict heats up and the stories become juicier and more perilous, Hamilton must choose between his job, his lover and his close friend.

The flaws of The Year of Living Dangerously are more apparent now, 35 years after its release, as the idea of cinema's tendency to 'whitewash' is now more openly discussed. It becomes clear very quickly that the most interesting character in the film is Billy Kwan. He has a much more personal attachment to the events playing out, and proves a more charismatic screen presence than Gibson's blander outsider. He is also played astonishingly well by Linda Hunt, the only actor to win an Academy Award for the playing a character of the opposite sex. When Kwan retreats into the background around the half-way mark, the focus shifts to the blossoming romance between Hamilton and Bryant, and the film becomes far less interesting in the process. However, there are some terrific individual scenes. The initial excitement of shooting a violent protest quickly gets out of hand, and a horrifyingly tense slow-drive through a heavily-armed road-block will leave you holding your breath. Yet it's difficult to shake the feeling that Weir's movie would have been far more absorbing with Kwan as the driving force at its centre.


Directed by: Peter Weir
Starring: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt, Bill Kerr, Michael Murphy
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,245: 'Alien: Resurrection' (1997)

Despite plummeting into a fiery furnace while carrying an unborn alien queen inside of her at the climax of David Fincher's messy-but-interesting Alien 3, Fox saw more money to be made in carrying on the franchise started by Ridley Scott back in 1979. For the fourth instalment, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, hot off the success of The City of Lost Children, was brought in to inject some life in the stuttering series, bringing a unique aesthetic to the ongoing battle between us puny humans and the superior xenomorph. Sadly, this unique aesthetic is muted and ugly, perhaps even more so than the incredibly miserable Alien 3, and the European sense of humour and quirkiness Jeunet also brings to the table doesn't quite fit the tone of the Alien series. If this was a stand-alone, unconnected genre movie, Alien Resurrection may now be fondly remembered as an offbeat, cyberpunk oddity.

It's 200 years since Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley sacrificed herself to finally rid the universe of the xenomorphs, but humanity's stupidity apparently hasn't wavered in that time. Ripley is cloned by some mad scientists from a single drop of blood, for the sole purpose of removing the queen inside of her (how the queen got inside her from the cloning process isn't quite explained), and turning its offspring into weapons and/or subjects of experimentation. She tells them, "she will breed, you will die," but naturally this falls on deaf ears. As the inevitable happens and the aliens free themselves from their cells, Ripley falls in with a rag-tag group of mercenaries. But Ripley is different; she can smell nearby aliens and seems to possess super-strength, and when she receives a jab to the face, her blood burns through the spaceship's floor. She clearly shares a bond and possibly DNA with her 'children', and the grizzled space pirates don't know whether they should trust her.

Alien Resurrection is the worst of the franchise for two reasons. One is that the film is so damn ugly. Aside from the wonderfully weird moment in which Ripley writhes in the slimy tentacles of her 'daughter', there isn't one shot that feels truly cinematic. The sets look expensive, certainly, but there's a TV-quality running throughout, backed-up by a pre-Buffy the Vampire Slayer show Joss Whedon script, which often feels like a precursor to the wonderful Firefly. The second is the casting of Winona Ryder as daughter-figure Call. Ryder is a terrific actress, but every line she utters here is without conviction. She stands out like a sore thumb when sharing scenes with such reliable character actors as Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, Dominique Pinon, Dan Hedaya and Brad Dourif. Jeunet amps up the gore factor, which is something the Alien series was never about, and neglects suspense and terror in the process. The climax is weird and disgusting, and may have been delightfully bonkers if this was unshackled by a franchise tag and was the director's way of letting loose with a generous budget. But this isn't the Alien I know and love.


Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, J.E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,242: 'Alien 3' (1992)

After the overwhelming success of James Cameron's follow-up to Ridley Scott's creature feature classic Alien, the direction in which the franchise could go from there was a mystery. Surprisingly, 20th Century Fox made the risky move of hiring an untried director who had made a name for himself in music videos, but didn't have a feature to his name. That man was David Fincher, and the experience almost turned him off movies for good. Frustrated by studio interference, constant script rewrites and budget issues, Fincher turned his back on the film once it hit the editing room, and has since disowned the film completely. The result was a box-office disappointment which received mostly negative reviews, possibly the result of an unyielding, miserable tone, or the fact that the final product was stitched together from scenes shot during an incredibly problematic production.

Even in a series that includes Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus, Alien 3 is still very much the dark horse of the bunch. Fans mostly loathe the film, but there are some who believe the film to be some sort of unrealised masterpiece. After all, this was made by the director who would go on to helm Se7en, Fight Club and Gone Girl, although you would never guess it. I sit somewhere in between. 2003's 'Assembly Line' cut (which Fincher refused to take part in) establishes some much-needed coherency, bulking up the role of Paul McGann's character and introducing more fluidity to the story. The new cut certainly doesn't cover up the movie's main issues, but it is a refreshingly downbeat spectacle, reasserting the alien's genetic superiority and terrifying prowess after Cameron's entry blew a small army of them away in spectacular fashion. There are also some terrific performances by a mainly British cast.

Alien 3 didn't do itself any favours by killing off fan favourites Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt (Carrie Henn) during the very first scene. After narrowly escaping with their lives following the events of Aliens, an alien egg inexplicably found itself on board their ship, hatching while the crew slept in stasis. An escape pod containing Hicks, Newt, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the mangled android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is launched when a fire starts on board, eventually landing on 'Fury' 161, a penal colony and lead-smelting works housing sex offenders and murderers of the worst kind. Led by the imposing Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the inmates have also turned to God. They are all bar-coded and shaven-headed due to a lice infestation, and look like they haven't seen the sun in years. Ripley, the only survivor, confides in prison doctor Clemens (Charles Dance), who is willing to perform an autopsy on the dead to ensure no alien lives inside of them. He also displays a bar-code.

Of course, it isn't long until another alien has hatched and is hunting down any poor sap in its way, as it seeks to reproduce and overrun. Writers David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson made the correct choice in returning to the series' routes with a lone alien stalking its prey. Cameron went bigger, but you can't really go any bigger than that. Fincher stages some scary set-pieces, particularly one involving a terrified Paul McGann and very close encounter for Ripley. The main issue lies in between these moments, with the film too busy establishing the new setting, introducing an all-new cast of characters, and bridging the gap between the end of the second movie and the beginning of this to gather any real momentum. Fury 161 is also a horrible place to spend over two hours in, especially with the threat of rape and murder at every turn. With the Assembly Cut now the definitive version, Alien 3 is certainly not the complete mess it is still considered to be by many. It's rough and ugly, yes, but this arguably adds more grit and ferocity to the terror. It's hard to think of what could have been had Fox realised the talent they had on their hands.


Directed by: David Fincher
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Ralph Brown, Danny Webb, Lance Henriksen
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,239: 'Aliens' (1986)

The biggest obstacle faced by a studio looking to cash-in on a surprise success that resonated well with both audiences and critics is the direction in which to take it. The seemingly obvious call would be to study the original and pick apart the ingredients which helped form, in the case of Alien, an instant science-fiction classic. While the sequel faced trouble getting the greenlight as Fox procrastinated over a project they felt was a costly risk, this delay in production was only leading to the sequel rights falling into the hands of the perfect guy for the job. Production on The Terminator was facing a lengthy delay due to scheduling conflicts, so director James Cameron found himself some spare time to pen a script. Only this wasn't to be called Alien 2, but Aliens, as Cameron sought to embrace the scope and ambition he would later become famous for.

While Alien features gruff space truckers, Aliens is led by a band of buzz-cut space marines, and Cameron's idea was not to continue with the slow-burn, show-little approach of the original, but a relentless assault on the senses. It's certainly isn't that Cameron doesn't know how to generate tension (the slow beeping of the motion tracker and the moment trapped inside a room with a face-hugger is clear evidence that he does), but he has a different method of pay-off. A long build-up following by a genuinely terrifying jump-scare made you hold your breath in Alien, but when the indecipherable blobs turn into a huge hoard of the remorseless, slimy killing machine, it's difficult to catch it. It's incredibly long, with a climax that seems to go on forever. But Aliens truly puts you through the wringer, to the point that, by the end, you loathe the xenomorph just as much as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

After spending 57 years in stasis, Ripley is picked up and rescued by her employers the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the very company that sent the crew of the Nostromo to their doom. Her wild claims of a perfect alien hunter are dismissed, mainly because the planet it was originally discovered on was colonised years ago, and her flight officer license is revoked. When communication with the colony is inevitably lost, shifty company representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) convinces Ripley to join an expedition back to the alien planet to investigate and exterminate any alien lifeforms discovered. She reluctantly agrees, and finds herself on a mission accompanied by a rag-tag squad of marines, who all seem trigger-happy but incredibly naive about the dangers they will face. When they arrive, the only survivor is a little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn), who speaks of monsters who mostly come out at night... mostly.

Sigourney Weaver is so terrific in this film that she received Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, something almost unheard of in the sci-fi/horror genre. Having learned that her daughter had died of old age just two years before she was rescued, her relationship with Newt and her eventual showdown with the alien queen is given a whole new layer. She is backed up by a supporting cast who help distinguish themselves in the platoon of grunts, with special mention going to Michael Biehn, Jenette Goldstein and, of course, the late Bill Paxton. They help elevate the film from an exciting sea of bullets and spattered alien carcasses to an engrossing thriller featuring characters you genuinely hope will make it out alive. Of course, they all don't, but Cameron makes almost every death memorable and occasionally oddly powerful. I still prefer the quiet horror of Alien, but I can completely understand why many prefer the deafening terror of Cameron's vision, but it can quite rightly take its place among cinema's greatest ever sequels.


Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein
Country: USA/UK

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,238: 'Alien' (1979)

Before the stream of sequels, spin-offs, video games, board games, and it's own incredibly underwhelming origin story, and before this year's shameless yet occasionally entertaining rip-off Life, there was Ridley Scott's Alien, a masterclass in how to create an A-picture out of a B-list idea and budget. Even before that of course, there was Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, but Scott infuses his film with such elegance, sheer horror, and it's very own mythos (which would be tirelessly explored in the aforementioned extended multi-media universe), that to label the seminal sci-fi classic as plagiarism of Bava's interesting, if schlocky, 60's space opera would be preposterous (although it clearly draws inspiration). As a favourite of most children growing up in the 80's and 90's, Alien joins the likes of Jaws, Back to the Future, The Goonies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind as one of the untouchable genre classics.

The crew of the Nostronomo, a starship freighter owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation are awoken from hypersleep by an urgent message from the on-board computer, Mother. A signal has been detected coming from a nearby planetoid, and by the terms of their contract they are obligated to investigate. The crew are a rag-tag bunch of what can only be described as working-class space truckers; scruffy, chain-smoking, and constantly complaining about pay. Many of them, including Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), object to the unnecessary risk, but Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) overrules. Touching down on the dark, desolate planet, they quickly come across a crashed alien ship containing the dead body of a large, unknown species. Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) probes further, eventually discovering what appears to be a nesting area. One of the eggs opens, and a spider-like creature attaches itself to his face, rendering him unresponsive but alive.

It's isn't difficult to work out how things unravel from this point. After the shock of the 'chestburster' scene (which I still recall seeing for the first time as a youngster), Alien follows the tradition of the slasher flick. But one of the many things that separates the film from the formulaic tedium of the slasher genre is the care Scott takes with showing you very little. The brief glimpses of the xenomorph, growing rapidly as the film progresses, are terrifying enough, but it's the long moments between the kills that makes Alien so engrossing. The design of the ship's interior is dark and dank, almost reptilian in appearance, purposely sculpted to make it seem that the creature could pop out of any corner of the screen, at any time. Our fears are confirmed in one particularly effective sequence involving the search for the ship's cat Jones, where what appears to be some harmless tubing in the background suddenly turns into an oozing, snarling face..

Now one of the most iconic monsters in cinema history, the xenomorph is a clever accumulation of our worst fears. A creature of pure survival, it serves only to prolong the existence of its species, whether it be to wipe out any possible threat, or using its victims as hosts for its offspring. James Cameron's admittedly excellent sequel threw more of them at the screen, and the subsequent films opted for CGI. But there is nothing scary about special effects, and Bolaji Badejo's performance inside the suit proves that practical effects can stand the test of time, and completely terrify when employed correctly. The alien isn't the only star of the show however, as Sigourney Weaver's badass survivor Ripley is one of the silver screen's most recognisable and much-loved heroines, in a role that could have been a simple 'last girl' routine in the hands of a lesser actor. She is backed up by a fantastic cast that also includes Veronica Cartwright, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto, all making their archetype characters feel alive. But the real star is Scott who, having gone off the boil in recent years, reminds us of a time when he was capable of delivering pure cinematic magic.


Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto
Country: UK/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,198: 'A Monster Calls' (2016)

The idea of a protagonist delving head-first into a realm of fantasy to escape the traumas of the real world is one that is employed by film-makers frequently, enabling them to inject an independent spirit into what could appear to some as a big-budget crowd-pleaser. Although these kinds of movies seem to pop up every year, the fantasy angle remains an incredibly effective tool, and occasionally a bona fide masterpiece will emerge such as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006). While del Toro's film saw its central character enter the titular labyrinth to escape a fascistic stepfather and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls, based on the novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, sets its focus on a more personal and relatable tragedy. Young Conor O'Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is struggling to deal with bullies, a strict grandmother and his mother's terminal cancer.

His young mother, played with incredible warmth by Felicity Jones, spends most of her time in bed as her body becomes exhausted from multiple hospital treatments. Conor watches her become weaker and weaker as his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) tends to her, and spends his hours in school terrified of bully Harry (James Melville). Struggling to sleep, he spends most of his nights drawing, finding refuge in his art. One night, he watches as the yew tree on the hill in the distance grows limbs and pulls itself from the ground, bounding towards Conor's bedroom window with fiery eyes. Voiced by a gravelly Liam Neeson, the Monster promises to tell Conor three stories, and insists that the boy tell him the fourth in return. The stories, which tell of good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things, seem nonsensical to Conor, but he gradually learns of the complexity of being human and dealing with grief and trauma.

With a reported budget of only $43 million, the special effects are incredibly effective in bringing the monster to life. He is not your usual kid's cuddly best friend, but an intimidating mass of branches and roots with a fondness for demolition who takes out most of Conor's bedroom when we first meet him. Yet spectacle is the last thing on Bayona's mind. The film's title and trailer may suggest a film to take your kids too, but A Monster Calls is a grounded and subdued drama similar to Bayona's breakthrough, the elegant and genuinely scary horror film The Orphanage (2007). While the emotional moments tread familiar ground and with this comes a sense of manipulation, there is a honesty to the performances, especially by the sad-eyed MacDougall, that help make this a lip-quivering experience. It didn't receive much attention during awards season and will no doubt pass most people by, but A Monster Calls is compelling study of a young boy struggling to understand his feelings and the events going on in the grown-up world around him.


Directed by: J.A. Bayona
Starring: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson, Toby Kebbell
Country: UK/Spain/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #883: 'Chappie' (2015)

Ever since South African director Neill Blomkamp's breakthrough District 9 (2009), great things have been expected. Although I personally believe his debut to be somewhat overrated, paying homage to great sci-fi movies perhaps once too often, it was certainly a breath of fresh air with it's parable of apartheid South Africa and its unconventional anti-hero. His follow-up, 2013's Elysium, was underwhelming, but it was making a point somewhere amidst it's kinky cybernetics and gaping plot-holes. His latest, Chappie, is an improvement, but Blomkamp again fails to live up to wunderkind label.

Set in a near-future Johannesburg, the streets are policed by a super-efficient robot force, causing crime rates to plunge and sending criminals scampering whenever they rear their metallic faces. Created by the not-so-shady corporation Tetravaal, headed by an underused Sigourney Weaver, employee and engineering prodigy Deon (Dev Patel) manages to create artificial intelligence and steals a damaged robot headed for the scrap heap to experiment with. However, on his way home he is kidnapped by a group of local gangsters - Ninja, Yo-Landi and Yankie (The Walking Dead's Jose Pablo Cantillo) - who force Deon to programme the droid to help them with a heist that will pay-off a angry kingpin.

And so Chappie is born; a robot who must learn everything like a child, albeit at a far advanced speed, and who not only possesses the ability to think and talk, but to create. Yo-Landi plays the role of mother, encouraging Chappie to express himself with art, but Ninja wants to turn him into the ultimate gangster - pimp-roll, bling and casual nose-wipe to end sentences included. But fellow Tetravaal employee Vincent (Hugh Jackman), an ex-solider jealous of Deon's accomplishments, has other ideas, attempting to sabotage Chappie at every turn in order to get his own inferior hulking droid greenlit by the company and sent out into the streets.

Chappie received an unfair panning from the critics and underperformed at the box-office. Yet there's plenty to be enjoyed in the film's occasional eccentric streaks, namely in the casting of Ninja and Yo-Landi, members of South African rap group Die Antwoord. They can't act for shit, but are at least an interesting alternative to the usual science-fiction stock characters, helping make their ridiculous persona's somewhat likeable. Chappie himself, played by Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley in motion-capture, has been compared to Jar-Jar Binks in some reviews and comments I've read. While he is sometimes slightly grating, his childish naivety is endearing, and invites sympathy when he is routinely abused and manipulated by the few people around him.

Yet Blomkamp seems to struggle with coming up with an original narrative. His films always seem to end up with the hero facing off against some one-note and extremely angry bad guy, pumped up by machinery or a big-ass weapon, and its no different here. It feels like Jackman's character was thrown into the mix for no other reason than to give Chappie a nemesis. Jackman himself, demonstrating one of cinema's all-time horrendous mullets, doesn't convince either. The privatisation of the police and the positive and negatives of tampering with A.I., as well as the struggles of parenthood, are crammed in and rushed over without really answering any of the many questions it poses. As a piece of entertainment, it provides all the thrills and spills required, but any deeper meditations tend to fall flat.


Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Ninja, Yo-Landi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver
Country: USA/Mexico

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #865: 'Exodus: Gods and Kings' (2014)

There is a moment during the climax of Ridley Scott's latest epic where your mind will drift to the image of a bearded Charlton Heston waving his giant staff and parting the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Exodus: Gods and Kings tells the story of Moses and Ramses, the familiar Old Testament tale about two former brothers-in-arms fighting on opposite sides of the battle; the former for the Hebrews, long enslaved by the ruling Egyptians, and the latter recently becoming the new Pharaoh in the wake of his father's death. It's the type of story that - even if the build-up lacks dramatics - is destined to be spectacular at the climax, as if there's on thing we do well in the modern age, it's spectacle.

Yet Exodus is an alarmingly bland and stuttering attempt to paint a revisionist's view of an age-old tale, resulting in a mixture of Ben-Hur (1959) and Gladiator (2000) without the scope or entertainment factor. Even Christian Bale, an actor usually of such ferocious intensity, fails to squeeze any dimensions out of Moses, and invites little sympathy during his darkest hours. Scott teases us with his own atheistic views, portraying Moses as a troubled man with possible schizophrenia, an idea which, if fully developed, would have justified this film's existence as a revisionist piece. His personality disorder manifests itself as a mediocre British child actor playing an angry God while Moses skulks on a mountain top, but outside of these moments he is little more than the archetypal command-blaring, sword-waving hero who delivers speeches and observes his men during training montages.

The only one appearing to be having any fun at all is Joel Edgerton, the Aussie actor playing the shaven-headed, bronzed-up Egyptian Pharaoh. Though he is kept at a disappointing distance, he at least manages to bring a little swagger to his performance, regardless of how utterly ridiculous he looks. The bulk of the rest of the cast are also played by Anglo's, all either frustratingly underused or comically miscast (or both). The likes of Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn, and every director's favourite go-to ethnic actor Ben Kingsley come and go, making little impact and offering no explanation as to why such familiar faces are required to fill such a role. Aaron Paul no doubt gets the worst deal. His Joshua gets the most screen time outside of Moses and Ramses but does little more than watch in confusion or awe at his leader, depending on how the script wants you to feel at that moment.

As a cinematic spectacle, Scott does manage to occasionally enthral. The early battle scene, which has Moses and Ramses charging as comrades, plays like a check-list of war cliches, and you would find better sword-clanking on TV with Game of Thrones. The ten plagues set-piece is extremely CGI-heavy, but the sweeping shots of the city running red with blood and infested with locusts and disease proves to be a beautiful sight, with Scott determined to offer a rational explanation to the events rather than it being the work of a vengeful God (though the jury is still out with the first-born deaths). This idea wouldn't be such a hindrance if Scott didn't make the rest of the film such a formulaic blockbuster and took the time to go deep into the psyche of Moses and his struggles with his belief in a God he sees as barbaric. But Exodus is neither revisionist piece nor a straight-forward Biblical epic, which is why I found myself longing for the simplicity of DeMille's vision, for at least you know where you stand.


Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Aaron Paul, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn, Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver
Country: UK/USA/Spain

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #28: 'Paul' (2011)

Two British sci-fi 'geeks', Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings (played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost respectively), have gone to America, firstly to Comic-con and then on to a road trip diverting to all UFO hot spots in an RV. Whilst in the vicinity of area 51, they are run off the road by an out-of-control car, which makes them careen onto the sand off-road. This is where they encounter Paul, a grey CGI alien escaped from said area 51, on a mission to get back to the mothership. Paul has been on Earth since 1947 when his ship crashed. Paul is a wise-ass talking, pot-smoking refugee from a distant planet who was sent here on a science project. Graeme and Clive are sequestered into taking him to find his way home. On their journey they pick up fundamentalist Christian Ruth (Kristen Wiig) from a trailer park. They are also on the run from the feds, led by Jason Bateman's Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil.

And that's it really. Written by Pegg and Frost, you'd think it may have the same verve and contextual Britishness of humour as previous work Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007). However, like their characters here, they have seemed to Americanise themselves so that they can one day 'make it' over the pond. It is therefore a very American affair, complete with the fitting stylised emotional 'arcs' of the characters. Don't get me wrong, there are some very funny moments in the film. Such as Paul stating that he gets his weed from the US Military, which is so strong that it killed Bob Dylan; "But he's not dead". Paul answers "That's what you think" (or something along those lines). I really liked the t-shirt worn by Ruth showing an image of Jesus shooting Darwin with the statement 'evolve this' underneath. But unfortunately many of the gags are derived from reference.

This brings me to the main thing that Pegg as a writer has consistently done since the brilliant TV series Spaced. Whilst the film references in Shaun and Fuzz were at times subtle, in both Spaced and Paul, they are nothing of the sort, kicking you in the face with their obviousness. Paul might as well be an hour and a half of Pegg and Frost giving Spielberg and Lucas a big massive wank. (Spielberg also gives a vocal cameo in the film) References to all Spielberg's Sci-fi output, along with, of course Star Wars (1977), are so tritely signposted that it might as well hold signs up stating "We love you Spielberg/Lucas, please suck my cock!" Many of the characters lines are simply lifted from 80's fodder such as Aliens (1986) (Sigorney Weaver has a cameo) and Robocop (1987), to name just two. But most gag/references are kept for the awe of said child/directors as previously stated.

The two main characters are likable, but they just seem so cliched. They may as well be lifted (particularly Peggs character) from Spaced. And Seth Rogen voicing Paul is amusing at times, but just falls short as its just another all-too-obvious stoner character for him. Pegg and Frost chose wisely (if they chose at all) to hire Gregg Motola to direct the film, whose previous films were the actually funny Superbad (2007) and Adventureland (2009). He brought with him the the ensemble of actors used regularly in the Apatow group, but the script is just not good enough to give the characters much to do. Perfect example being, the usually excellent Bill Hader, who in my opinion stole the show in Superbad as one-of-the-boys police Officer Slater. So it simply seems that these talents were absolutely wasted.

Well, in summary, the film definitely has some genuine laughs, but just seems to leave great streams of pearl necklaces on the faces of those filmmakers who revived (or ruined) Hollywood filmmaking from 1975 onwards. Ha Ha, funny.


Directed by: Greg Mottola
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Sigourney Weaver, Jane Lynch
Country: USA/UK

Rating: **

Marc Ivamy