The Paul Conundrum

Note: The following was written last year, several weeks before Paul‘s release.

The saying “Never judge a book by its cover” bears less and less truth with the printing of every new book, especially with the latest flood of novelty celebrity novels and memoirs—A Shore Thing anyone? Today, paying for a paperback book is like paying full 1990-retail price for the Star Wars trilogy on VHS, and even if you wanted to save a few bucks and download a digital copy of a book, that still requires you shell out $150 for the latest e-reader. While 3D movies keep upping ticket prices, you have to judge a book by its cover before forking over a wad of crinkled dollar bills for it, and when taking a date to the movies requires you bow your head and mumble to the box office attendant “put the rest on my card,” you should always judge a movie by its trailer.

Most of the time, you can watch a movie trailer just once and make your decision: Directed by Robert Rodriguez? I’m in; Starring that-one-guy-from-the-other-thing? No thanks; Will Ferrell as man-baby in space? I’ll Netflix it. Usually, the process is quite simple, but what about a movie like Paul?

On March 18, Paul will have its theatrical wide release. It’s written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (stars of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), directed by Greg Mottola (Adventureland, Superbad) and stars, well, a lot of stars, but its starring stars are Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, with Seth Rogen (The Green Hornet, Funny People) voicing the title character. A quick scan of the movie’s credits should have all subscribers to the Judd Apatow- or Edgar Wright-school of comedy drooling, but they should also be cautious and even a little timid for the very same reason.

Paul’s credits is composed of huge names (big players from behind the camera as well as in front) that you know like Simon Pegg, Seth Rogen, Steven Spielberg, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Jane Lynch; and should know like Joe Lo Truglio, Jeffrey Tambor, Greg Mottola, David Koechner, Allison Jones, and John Carroll Lynch. Its high concept premise sounds hilarious and exciting: two sci-fi geeks road trip with a talking alien. But still, shouldn’t the collision of so many names and elements signal some warning?

The last movie in recent memory with a veritable list of movie star names was the shameless free-paycheck project, Valentine’s Day, starring Oscar nominees Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah and boasting Oscar winners Jaime Foxx, Kathy Bates, and Julia Roberts.  But of course, this is an unfair comparison, because unlike Paul, Day was not a comedy, or at least if it was, no one I know experienced levity, laughter or any other effects associated with the genre.

You should be especially cautious before handing your $10.50 plus popcorn over to Paul if you’re still smarting from Get Him to the Greek, the somewhat spin-off of the hilarious and touching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Greek had the same director, producer, and two of the same stars as Marshall (one of them being the imagined squattier, younger brother to Seth Rogen that is Jonah Hill) but lacked the charm and laughs of its far superior progenitor. Paul is similar to Greek in this regard: it’s a product consisting of some—but not all—of the main ingredients of past movie hits.

Career-launching English movies Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, were written by Pegg and co-written and directed by Edgar Wright. Paul is decidedly an American effort, also written by Pegg, but this time co-scribed by Frost—this being his first feature film writing credit. Frost sharing the writing credit may not seem like an immediate call for Paul’s boycott, but we can’t forget Pegg’s last effort at becoming a star in America. What was the last Pegg vehicle that was co-written and directed by someone other than good friend Wright and aimed at American audiences? Run, Fatboy, Run. (Even the title serves as social commentary about how the British view American humor.) Its domestic gross was $6 million, which was $4 million short of its production cost. Was that movie absolutely unbearable and void of laughs? No. But was it hard not to run from if you were expecting Pegg-quality humor and wit found in his previous British films? Yaaarp!

It is my hope that Pegg and Frost’s buddy chemistry (last seen in Fuzz) can overcome any supposed writing flaws. The two have a bromantic chemistry that rivals any pairing in America, and I’m including Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, or hipsters and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Their onscreen chemistry is so endearing and palpable that one would think it infallible. But alas, while it takes many tests to prove a law, it only takes one to disprove it.

American stars Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, who are now bankable movie stars in their own rights, played hilarious sidekicks to Will Ferrell in the Apatow-produced Anchorman, and forced upon but sweet friends in the Apatow-directed 40-Year-Old Virgin. So, when it came time for Rudd and Carell to play hilarious leading men who end up forming a sweet friendship in last year’s Dinner for Schmucks, it seemed inevitable that the movie would be a blockbuster hit. But it wasn’t.

Rudd and Carell were being led by someone unfamiliar with the subversive raunchiness of Apatow and his close-knit group of collaborators. They were directed by a mainstream comedic director with a penchant for visual gags and broader humor—Jay Roach—whose most famous works include Meet the Parents and the Austin Powers trilogy (rumored to soon be a tetralogy). With Paul, there is a very real danger that American director Greg Mottola could make real schmucks out of Pegg and Frost.

Mottola’s previous directorial efforts explain a large portion of Paul’s secondary casting: he directed Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor in episodes of the critically acclaimed, canceled-too-soon Arrested Development; Seth Rogen in Undeclared (the sequel in essence to the other critically acclaimed, canceled-too-soon show Freaks and Geeks); Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig in Adventureland; and zany character actor Joe Lo Truglio in Superbad. Mottola has a lot of experience pulling great performances out of the aforementioned secondary actors in Paul, but absolutely no—read zilch, none, nada—experience in directing the two actors who have the most screen time and don’t come from the American Apatow school of comedy. Just as Mottola may be able to adeptly guide his own set of repeat collaborators, he just might stifle the nuances and rhythms of Pegg and Frost’s British humour, especially when the two frequently have to interact with an alien that doesn’t exist until post-production; brutal flashes of Jason Lee grimacing at a triplet of rodents, Brendan Fraser pratfalling alongside loonatic toons, and James Marsden faking disgust at a CG rabbit defecating a festive pile of jelly beans threaten my delicate hopes for Paul.

And yet, all of these obstacles are mere conjecture. They are the imagined pitfalls of a cynical tightwad filmgoer. But still, there is a bit of information about Paul that almost definitively reduces it to mere punchline history—its release date, March 18.

The month of March lies in that void of the movie-release cycle between the end-of-the-year-Oscar-bait period and the summer of blockbusters. Movies released in this month are typically films that its own distribution companies have little faith in: the distributors don’t want it competing with big holiday movies or summer tent poles, so they release it in March hoping to attract audiences going to the movies naively hoping to end their dry spell. For example, we turn to last year’s March movies, The Runaways and Remember Me, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, respectively. The tween scream-inducing Twilight leads ventured outside of their blockbuster franchise to test their star power elsewhere—and failed. Not even the experienced Jude Law could carry last March’s Repo Men to box-office success, and that was just months after his own blockbuster franchise Sherlock Holmes.

Still, a glimmer of hope remains for Paul, if not my own profound desire for the film to be great for my personal satisfaction. A few years ago I initially passed on a film after being tortured by its generic and family-friendly romp involving a widower with three daughters who finds a wholesome companion and mother for his children. Aawwww… But at the insistence of a friend and against my own judgment, I paid for a ticket and saw the movie anyway–then fell in love. That movie was the quietly-endearing Dan in Real Life, which sneaks up on you with a humble ensemble cast that delights and surprises. Dan’s tone was complexly sweet and humanly funny, an experience too complicated to convey in a 30-second spot, so clips from it were crammed and stapled into a Frankenstein’s Creature of a generic movie trailer. (Never again will I doubt you, Juliette Binoche!).

So, despite my doubts and conjectures, as the lights dim on Paul’s opening night, given the possibility of a cinematic orgasmic explosion of comedic genius fueled by sheer star power, after much debate I’ll be anxiously awaiting to be either pleasantly surprised or surprisingly disappointed. And if I end up experiencing the latter, I’ll only have my own judgment to blame.