Why?
Any comedy that shows two characters fainting and falling backwards at the same instant is dealing really cheap cards. Any alien-encounter comedy that mentions Reese’s Pieces is looking to appeal to the lowest and stupidest people out there. It’s hard to understand how Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) could decide to willfully devalue his brand by making something like this. I can’t wait to see this with the hoo-hoo crowd at South by Southwest.
wow that looks absolutely, unequivocally, mind-numbingly HORRIBLE
Be sure to take a picture of whoever laughs loudest.
On a sidenote, has anyone done a worse job at parlaying a potential career resurgence into solid work than Jason Bateman? He is the new kiss of death.
It bafles me that films like this get made. a 50 million dollar fart joke. Ridiculous…
Apparently the film is quite good, and the trailers are largely unrepresentative of the whole thing. That said, can’t help but get a slight whiff of The Invention of Lying, which was also the US “debut” of a popular British comedian (yeah, I know they’d acted in US films before, but this is the first one they wrote specifically set over here), filled with reliable US comic actors, yet fell flat because it fell in some weird transatlantic inbetween-zone.
Rotten Tomatoes is 66 % so far with 29 reviews and box office is great in the UK ($9m opening weekend including previews)…
It’s probably no SHAUN OF THE DEAD but if it is on the level of HOT FUZZ that would be good enough for me…
It’s actually NOT very hard to understand how Greg Mottola could decide to willfully devalue his brand by making something like this — he’s Greg effing Mottola, he has no real brand, and he needs a bullshit hollywood hit or you’ll never hear his name again. Let’s not kid ourselves – Superbad and Adventureland were average films, the former being lightning in a bottle (Hill and Cera are DONE), the latter being inconsequential. simple.
I just can’t wait for the posts coming in a month or two in which Jeff complains about not getting invited over to Greg’s place for dinner.
Glad to see they made a sequel to Spaced Invaders. Finally!.
Look at some of your nerds trying to bend over backwards trying to defend the honor of Paul (wtf kind of AWFUL title is that, anyway?) — “actually I heard it was quite good.” Bullshiiiiiiit
Watch the trailer. Game over — it sucks. Sometimes you just know within 5 seconds, and this is absolutely one of those times. Team Wells all the way on this garbage.
Nick Frost, Simon Pegg — man, do I hate these assholes. They may not be quite as overrated as Edgar Wright, but it’s damn close.
Now I didn’t find Adventureland to be particularly hateful to sit through, but it was pretty generic stuff, cinematically speaking. Arispil is right — Mottola has no real “brand” to devalue; he never did.
I just saw it tonight. I love ‘Shaun of the Dead’. I love ‘Hot Fuzz’. I loved ‘Superbad’. I’ve always liked Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, and Kristin Wiig, and David Koechner, and Jason Bateman, and Bill Hader, and Joe Lo Truglio, and Jane Lynch, and John Carroll Lynch, and Sigourney Weaver.
This is a flat-out bad movie. The script is Adam Sandler level mediocre, but where he would go to “funny” voices, this goes to “funny” references to other movies. Not just lame references to alien movies, but also odd ones, like ‘The Karate Kid’ and ‘Back to the Future’.
The cast, with one exception, is consistently likable and sometimes get off some good lines. Bateman is never funny in it, but is surprisingly good as a bad-ass until the movie completely undercuts him (it has a problem with undercutting several of its own best moments). John Carroll Lynch seems to be having a lot of fun in the closest thing the movie has to a consistent character. The one exception is Pegg; he’s just bad.
Also, for the record, I like religion bashing, but if you thought that ‘Invention of Lying’ took a sudden ham-fisted turn into random anti-religion jokes, you ain’t seen nothing yet! At least they were funny in ‘Invention of Lying’.
Looks funny.
Jeff – I don’t want to spoil a decent gag; I’ll just say, there’s an E.T. joke in the movie that you’ll like a lot more. Actually, I think at first, you’ll hate it, but then, right at the end of the scene, Seth Rogen pulls off an ad-lib that you’ll love.
I saw the movie and it was a blast. Great animation. Lots of puns. Gonna watch it again.
track lighting
That spammer is lying, there are very few puns, and they’re all name jokes.
Paul looks like one of films that sounds so good on paper and then when you see it, it disappoints greatly.
“Looks funny.”
Which part(s), exactly? I’m actually not trying to be a dick here at all; I’m genuinely curious to hear your answer.
oh my god, I can’t wait for Lex to see this, because his epic rant about how terrible it is will be beautiful to behold.
a romance between Kristin wiig and Simon Pegg in a terrible hairpiece? Take the bullet, Lex, go see the movie, your review will be worth it.
ADVENTURELAND isn’t just great, it’s literally, not Lexaggerating, one of my favorite movies of ALL time. It hits SO many chords with me, it basically IS my upbringing, is even set where I grew up, it features Eisenberg essentially playing my 19-year-old douche self, and it stars my most lusted-after actress of all time. When I saw that movie I didn’t blink, when it was over I couldn’t get up… It’s pretty close to a religious experience for me for a million personal reasons I won’t bore you with, even beyond the presence of GOD HERSELF in the movie. It is a four-star, five-star, Kirk Gibson out of the park MASTERPIECE.
So unless PAUL is SCOTT PILGRIM level terrible, I am going way, way out of my way to give it the benefit of the doubt. I do think the trailer has some laughs. I do NOT enjoy Kristen Wiig’s shtick like this, and the presence of hacky David Koechner doesn’t exactly get me champing at the bit.
But I will reserve judgment. I’m still saying it’s funny. Enough hits to the balls and deadpan Rogen voice that I laughed. I will laugh.
Koechner is barely in it, and takes a good kick to the balls. There’s a really good balls-kick that isn’t in the trailer, so I won’t spoil it.
Kicks to the balls = NEVER not funny.
Is it MacGruber bad?
I didn’t think ‘MacGruber’ was all that good overall, but it had a few much funnier bits than this. Nothing in ‘Paul’ is anywhere near as funny as the sex scene in ‘MacGruber’. On the other hand, it never crashes and burns the way ‘MacGruber’ too often does.
It’s not that it’s actively terrible, it’s just really really mediocre and never really particularly funny; it gets a line off here or there, but never builds anything out of it.
But you specifically, I think I’ve seen you write six paragraphs on how much you hate at least half a dozen things this movies does. Including the aforementioned hairpiece, Wiig in a romantic role, and reverence for the film ‘Aliens’.
Kaned: It’s not nerds that are saying it’s good, it’s actual proper critics. They’re not saying it’s some comedic masterpiece, but the reviews have been largely positive. The trailer’s not as bad as you’re saying, but I admit it’s not very good either.
Anyway, whatever. It’ll open to $8.4m and then finish with a $22.9m gross or some shit. Yes, that specific. D.Z. will blame its failure on lack of Joe LaTruglio box office hits or something, and say he preferred it when it was called Mac and Me.
Greg Mottola gotta eat!!!
>>D.Z. will blame its failure on lack of Joe LaTruglio box office hits or something, and say he preferred it when it was called Mac and Me.
There is an actual Mac and Me joke in it. Nick Frost, playing an award winning science fiction writer, says it has always been a dream of his to meet an alien, ever since he saw Mac and Me.
And yes, that’s about the standaerd of the humour throughout. Edgar Wright was obviously the one with the talent. This opened well in Britain and the reviews were mixed to respectable, but it is an absolute steaming turd. A howling lame dog.
Well, I’ll keep an open mind.
I think part of the problem might be that British comedians tend to place their American counterparts on a pedestal, almost too respectful. Like that scene in In The Loop where the two British politicians are giddy with excitement that they’re actually in a motorcade, British comedians tend to lose their shit when they’re in the same room as Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell or anyone.
They seem so genuinely thrilled to have the chance to make a film in the US that they adopt this weird half-British half-American style of comedy that doesn’t really hit either sweet spot. And then, as in the case of Gervais and now Pegg/Frost, stuff them with as many of their idols as they can. So I’m not surprised the film feels half-baked.
Just compare the mediocre Invention of Lying to the excellent Cemetery Junction.
It’s strange how a lot of the comedy is lost when they cross the Atlantic. Steve Coogan, who is a bonafide comic genius up there with the all-time greats, ends up playing the fall guy or straight man in Tropic Thunder and The Other Guys, because the Americans all like him but can’t figure out what to do with him. Just as it’s weird to see the likes of David Cross in British sitcoms now.
Adventureland is a cult hit. I would know. I’m on tumblr. Kids be reblogging Adventureland like crazy.
I’ll keep this short as Eloi (and possibly others) has said it better, but why have Seth Rogen voice “Paul”? Why have Paul say anything at all? Let Rogen do more voicework in family-friendly fare and the titular character in this be a non-CG/sometimes cute, sometimes disgusting/ silent comedic partner? A 30-years-later-’E.T.’ parody yes, but other sci-fi tropes and junk could be in the mix. This, I think, is how it would have been made in 2000-2005 before Pegg/Frost sold out. Oh, and it would’ve been funnier.
cangefilmfest: Yeah, it does rather seem like Rogen was another on their checklist of “cool dudes we’d like to work with”. Either that, or the studio insisted on him, given that Pegg’s only real US starring role made no money.
cange – it’s not family friendly at all, he’s a hard-R alien who moons people, smokes pot, and curses all the time.
I don’t know whether it’s scripted this way or just completely improvised, but the alien *is* Seth Rogen. It actually throws off the film a bit.
Adventureland is the best out of these new teen coming of age movies. Real nice
BobbyLupo, my point is that this seems like a Laurel and Hardy film with a talking baby or dog that sounds like Groucho Marx. Why, why would that exist? Such a movie was never made. For a reason. Rogen could say f**k a thousand times and nothing would be different. This just seems to me like two different movies.
BobbyLupo, my point is that this seems like a Laurel and Hardy film with a talking baby or dog that sounds like Groucho Marx. Why, why would that exist? Such a movie was never made. For a reason. Rogen could say f**k a thousand times and nothing would be different. This just seems to me like two different movies.
I’m not sure what you’re complaining about, exactly; if you’re comparing a talking alien to a talking baby or a talking dog, I don’t think that argument flies. But if you’re saying that Rogen and Pegg & Frost are in two different movies, that’s more or less true.
The surprising part, though, is that the Pegg & Frost movie is such a non-starter that Rogen, with no particular effort, is much funnier than either of them. The pot and sex jokes he brings into it actually work from time to time, whereas the alien-movie parody that should be an easy solid movie from them goes nowhere.
Eloi: No, I’ll blame it on a dumb release date, an R rating for a comedy which should be PG-13, and a lack of stars or hot girls. Plus, it’s basically a sequel to Fanboys. And apparently, Universal thought it was worth $50 million, for some reason.
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