Movie Review: Paul

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Are you the type that believes in conspiracy theories? Do you listen to Art Bell and George Noory late night on Coast to Coast AM? Do you have different colors and styles of tin hats as part of your permanent clothing collection? Have you even remotely thought of trying the Klingon dish gagh, going to Comic-Con, or chuckling at Galaxy Quest? If so, then Paul is the movie for you!

Just as Galaxy Quest pokes fun at the fans of Star Trek writers Nick Frost and Simon Pegg poke fun of both people who believe and don't believe in extraterrestrial life. Frost and Pegg also take the lead roles as science fiction writer Clive Gollings and illustrator Graeme Willy. The blokes are best friends from the UK who have come to America to be part of the greatest geek fest going on planet Earth, Comic-Con. For any red blooded geek male they had to have the shots of a group of ladies dressed up as slave Princess Leia. Be still my foolish heart!

Where were we? Oh yeah...So Comic-Con was the first part of the big journey. The next part was renting a mobile home RV and doing a road trip to hot spots of alien folklore like the Extraterrestrial Highway, Groom lake and the Black Mailbox , Little A'Le'Inn, Area 51 and of course, Roswell, New Mexico. Something that surprised me was two guys from England driving this big vehicle sitting in the left side and heading down the highway in the right side lane. They seemed to pick that up pretty easily!

Of course the story wouldn't be funny if the total believers in aliens don't come across a real alien. All of a sudden they now really have to believe in aliens. This one is named of all things, Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen). Turns out the government has known about him since 1947 and he's been helping them thinking that he was their guest. He made a run for it when he discovered he was not a visitor getting the star treatment, but a prisoner who is now trying to escape and get back to his mother ship. He enlists the two nerds to help him out and they agree.

What worked is that Rogen didn't play the part over the top vocally. What the animation of Paul did with his behaviors was a bit over the edge. Between his need for food, sleep and smoking pot Paul is just one of the guys. The movie parodies and skews so many parts of the alien genre you can get in a few good laughs. Crash landings, mother ships, body probes, mind melds, healing abilities, snacks, men in black, cover ups....it's all there. There are numerous references to all sorts of movies within the genre. See if you can pick them out. There is even one special scene where Paul is talking to a certain someone (wink) on the phone. Turns out that someone (wink) was actually on the other end of the line.

The one part of the movie I didn't like was the language, it went over the top for no reason. It seemed like they were trying to have a swearfest to see who could come up with the most nonsensical combination of words to try to describe things. That just didn't work. It became a distraction rather than an addition to the movie. For the language including sexual references, and some drug use the movie received an R rating.

The ending was not what I was expecting. The actresses selected for two pivotal (well, as pivotal as you can get for a parody movie) were great choices. The 104 minutes passed quickly. Don't leave the theater before the credits start to roll, once they do then go ahead and leave. While I might need to wash out my ears with soap, there was a smile on my face as I walked out of the dark into the light. Between the movie and the free small popcorn that Regal made available via a coupon on their Facebook page, it was a good movie day!

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Battle Los Angeles

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Every week I battle in my head as to where to spend my $8.50 for a matinee show of the movie that I will review for the week. The preview for this week's cinematic presentation had me intrigued and had me hopeful. It's fun to watch a city taken out by a volcano, earthquake or Godzilla. Unfortunately, I lost the war in seeing Battle Los Angeles.

Let me point out right up front that I wasn't even sure of the title of the movie. I saw the title with the name Los Angeles spelled out and in the abbreviation of LA. I also saw it with and without the colon between Battle and the city name. Since my title already includes a colon, I decided not to have a double colon in there!

When I walked into the theater, I had some hope. Due to the tsunami that hit Hawaii earlier that morning, many people had the day off and the theater for a 2pm matinee show was at the point of getting uncomfortable. You know the place where there really aren't those extra seats between you and your neighbor to give you that zone of protection. There were only a few of those spacer seats left.

Once again Los Angeles and the world is in trouble. We're being invaded by aliens. If you've seen Independence Day, War of the Worlds, Battlefield Earth, Cloverfield or Skyline, you've pretty much seen this movie. Nothing new was covered here. Just offshore of major cities around the world "meteors" have crashed into the ocean and the hordes of technically advanced invaders come ashore.

To rescue civilians behind enemy line, Marines from Camp Pendelton including SSgt Michael Nantz (the square jawed Aaron Eckhart) are sent in. They battle the enemy not knowing anything about them. In the background we have snippets of news reports to help us fill in information gaps.

Camera shots are shakey. They are very shakey. It was harder to watch this movie than Cloverfield. Towards the end the camera shots did settle down a bit, but it was still tough to watch.

Like Skyline, there were some impressive computer generated images, but the detail are hidden between the quick shots, looking through view finders, or heat plumes. Lots of things go boom!

Even though Nantz was the main focus of the story, writer Christopher Bertolini had too many extra characters between civilians and marine. The 116 minutes wasn't enough to give meaning to the stories of the rescuers or rescued. While battling to get to a safety zone the question remained, can these invaders be taken out by a virus or bomb or something the enemy underestimated?

With the battles and dealing with marines, the movie was rated PG-13 for sustained and intense sequences of war violence and destruction, and for language. I would dare suggest that this will be a Razzie nomination in 2012 for worst picture. Let's just hope they don't plan on Battle Washington DC or Battle Rio de Janeiro.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

Movie Review: Skyline

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Sometimes a movie trailer shows promise and looks interesting. But then you go to the movie and realize the two are very different items. This is one of those times when you got sold a bill of good. Skyline was really flat lined.

The audience is dropped right into the middle of the action right as the movie begins. We meet Jarrod and Elaine (Eric Balfour and Scottie Thompson) who are staying with friends Terry and Candice (Donald Faison and Brittany Daniel). As they sleep, blue lights start falling from the night sky of Los Angeles. They are awoken by rumbling to discover people are being taken away by the blue lights. We are being invaded by aliens ala Independence Day. Creatures are coming out and taking people ala Cloverfield. We watch the military try to take out the alien ships like the military attacking Godzilla all to no avail.

Ho Hum. For the main players we are never given any reason to cheer for them and hope they live. Just like a typical slasher horror film, one by one by one they are taken out in a cliche manner. The acting is very wooden, the scenes are very choppy. The special effects of the ships could have been impressive, but as we look at some of the ships and creatures which appear to be part mechanical and part living organism, there are either heat or cloud or dust or some sort of distortion obscuring the intricacies. Certain plot details are shown but aren't given a pay off or are ignored or even worse, contradicted. They try to use a time line of events, but what for? It doesn't make sense.

When you discover what the aliens want and how they go about getting it you wonder how this could be happening. It doesn't make sense, repeating to emphasize the point and the ending is just horrible. It could be set up for a sequel I guess but hopefully, mercifully it won't happen. This movie wasn't given advanced screenings for review usually indicating you have a stinker on your hands. As I write this, on Rotten Tomatoes it has an 11% fresh rating.

The movie is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some language, and brief sexual content with a running time of 92 minutes. My suggestion would be if you start heading towards the light of this movie, turn around and make a bee line away from Skyline.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.