2011 - PAUL, funny and depressing science fiction comedy.

Talk about eating your young.  Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are funny guys and have an affection for science fiction film dorks and their dorky films, but after a while this homage stuff can only get you so far.  Oh yea Paul is about a couple of comic-con nerds who run into an actual space alien and need to get him to his space ship before the government captures him.

At first it's funny to see these guys geek out about Area 51, UFOs and comic books.  After a while you start to realize that there is really nothing more to the film's humor than a bunch of in-jokes about science fiction films and TV shows, in particular, science fiction film and TV shows that only date back as far as the mid 1970's.  Apparently no one has heard of Forbidden Planet or Metropolis or god forbid, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

You're supposed to laugh at the fact that you get all their references to Spielberg films and Battlestar Galacticia.  But those aren't jokes, they're just Pegg and Frost showing how much they know about science fiction films.

The theme of Paul seems to come from that biblical passage, "the nerds meek will inherit the earth,"  but they got it wrong.  Like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, this film is not a breakout success.  The reality is that no vast audience of science fiction nerds is going to take an in joke film like this and turn it into a big hit because that audience doesn't actually exist.  Avatar doesn't count, that was marketed as an event not an actual film. 

Maybe the problem with Paul was the absence of their regular director Edgar Wright.  Wright could have given the film a little more visual punch which would have covered up the lack of genuine wit that the film is missing.  Edgar Wright was unfortunately working on Scott Pilgrim vs the World and for all the razzle dazzle of that film, it was a heartless film as well.

So perhaps the lesson of Paul is these three guys should just make films together since they seem to compliment each other's sensibilities. 

104 minutes, written by Simon Pegg.