Paul

OPENING: 03/18/2011

STUDIO: Universal Pictures

RUN TIME: 104 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Fugitive, celebrity, slacker, joker, alien.

Opening Statement
After delighting moviegoers with the wildly entertaining one-two punch of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have re-teamed for the similarly satirical sci-fi comedy Paul. Alas, the film proves a huge step down for the duo.

Facts of the Case
Graham (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) are two English buddies on holiday in the United States. After enjoying a few days at the San Diego Comic-Con, the pair plans to hit the road in their RV and check out the locations of famous “alien sightings.” Though both men believe quite strongly in the existence of aliens, they’re nonetheless startled to actually encounter one in real life.

The alien’s name is Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen, Knocked Up), and he looks like a stereotypical amalgam of every Hollywood alien you’ve ever seen. That’s largely due to the fact that Paul has been around since the 1940s, and those who have glimpsed him have incorporated elements of his features into various aspects of pop culture. Paul’s assimilated a good deal of pop culture himself, frequently referencing his favorite movies and music (not to mention smoking, drinking and swearing like a space sailor).

After an awkward “getting to know you” period, Graham and Clive agree to allow Paul to accompany them on their journey. Along the way, they encounter a bible-thumping redneck (John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac), a non-bible thumping redneck (David Koechner, The Office), a timid creationist (Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live), some bumbling federal agents (including Bill Hader, Superbad and Jason Bateman, Arrested Development), a respected sci-fi writer (Jeffrey Tambor, Hellboy) a powerful bureaucrat (Sigourney Weaver, Alien), a friendly waitress (Jane Lynch, Glee) and others.

The Evidence
If nothing else, Paul serves as a sharp demonstration of just how gifted writer/director Edgar Wright is. Though Wright had nothing to do with the film, it’s clear that the seemingly unstoppable team of Pegg and Frost is reduced considerably without Wright at the helm. The infectious energy and ferocious wit of Wright’s Pegg n’ Frost films are gone, replaced with a good deal of aimless raunchiness, clumsy gags and sloppy storytelling.

Still, Paul seems like it ought to be a lot of fun. In addition to a screenplay written by Pegg and Frost, the film is helmed by Greg Motolla (who gave us the entertaining Superbad and the surprisingly moving Adventureland) and boasts a large cast of very funny people. There are so many things about Paul that probably looked great on paper which simply don’t add up to much in the film.

During some scenes, Paul feels like a movie that never really got past the conceptual stage. The notion of a comedy about an alien who has influenced every element of alien pop culture in recent decades is a potential comedic goldmine, but Paul is content to make some obvious Spielberg references and leave it at that. For that matter, most of the movie’s sci-fi references tend to be pretty obvious (when the guys enter a bar, the band is playing a country & western version of the Cantina music from Star Wars). The film desperately wants to be regarded as a hip celebration of geek culture, but its insistence on being so inclusive prevents that. Being aware of famous moments in Star Wars, E.T. and Star Trek hardly qualifies one as a nerd.

Another idea that probably looked great on paper: creating a comedy about two frightened Brits enduring the horrors of America. Paul presents us as a nation of right-wing, idiotic, tobacco-chewing, gun-loving, power-hungry religious zealots. Which, uh, is fair enough, I guess. There’s fun to be had in looking at the less savory parts of America through the eyes of outsiders, but all of the American characters are presented as such simplistic, one-note cartoons that the whole joke loses its steam very quickly. The film isn’t as much a skewering of American culture as it is a story made up by someone who heard about America from a friend of a friend a few years ago. Alas, we’re a million miles from the delightful sting of In the Loop.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the central characters just aren’t that interesting. Pegg and Frost aren’t interacting with each other so much as they are with the CGI alien, and they have a tough time generating genuine chemistry with him. Speaking of which, choosing Seth Rogen to voice the title character was a bad idea. Rogen’s cinematic persona is so well-established at this point that we know pretty much everything about Paul within a few minutes of meeting him, and Rogen’s distinctive bark becomes grating rather quickly. I think Rogen is a talented guy, but we either need a break from him for a while or he needs to try tackling more projects that push him out of his comfort zone.

The supporting cast is loaded with talented folks, and we smile when we see most of them appear. Unfortunately, too many of them aren’t given anything to do–Jane Lynch, John Carroll Lynch and Sigourney Weaver in particular are completely wasted. Kristen Wiig has fun playing a character who transforms from timid Christian to foul-mouthed rebel, but after a while she’s forced to repeat the same joke over and over again (she’s new to swearing, so she uses foul language in a variety of unusual ways). Only Bill Hader manages to both receive a decent character and find a way to keep that character interesting for the duration of his screen time.

When the film arrives at its warm and gooey final reel, the effect is rather strange: the “character development” up to this point has been so thin and cartoonish that the movie’s attempt at sincerity feels like a joke. To watch these scenes and feel nothing is to realize just how ineffective Paul is at achieving what it seemingly set out to accomplish.

Closing Statement
In fairness, it should be noted that there are a handful of laughs to be had, along with a handful of genuinely clever sight gags and throwaway lines. Still, these moments only come along just often enough to remind us how much better this could have been had the screenplay been through another draft or two (or three or four). Here’s hoping Pegg and Frost are back in fine form their next time around.

The Verdict
5/10

Sanctum

OPENING: 02/04/2011

STUDIO: Relativity Media

RUN TIME: 109 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
The only way out is down.

Opening Statement
I’ll be frank – movies like Sanctum scare the shit out of me. When I see people literally trapped in tight situations, from which there is no escape (or hope) to speak of, my heebee jeebee meter goes through the roof.

Like a wicked hybrid of Neil Marshall’s The Descent (sans Gollum) and Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure, Alister Grierson’s terror-ride into the unknown caters to the deep, dark internal fears inherent in all human beings. I’m talking about those butterflies-in-the-stomach, nail-biting fears that arise when one is forced against a wall, with water rushing in on all sides, and little time to find a way out. I’ve had nightmares that reflect the scenario presented in Grierson’s flick, which could be why I’m not fond of spelunking.

Facts of the Case
Sanctum follows a rag tag group of individuals who become trapped inside a massive cave structure due to a particularly bad cyclone that more or less blocks their exit. As the cave continues to flood, the survivors, including a world-weary explorer (Richard Roxburgh), his headstrong son (Rhys Wakefield), a zany billionaire (Ioan Gruffudd) and his wife (Alice Parkinson) – the movie star, Professor and Mary Ann … sorry – must follow a complex system of tunnels and exit the structure before it floods completely.

The Evidence
Sanctum contains all the staples of a James Cameron flick– a simple story dotted with lively characters, intricately wrapped within a technologically sound, exciting motion picture, and shot in 3D no less. That also means the action comes loaded with human melodrama, and ample doses of cheese to boot.

I’m a big fan of Cameron, and apparently one of the few that actually liked Titanic and Avatar, but even I can smell a case of style over substance. With Sanctum, apparently based off the real-life experience of co-writer Andrew Wight, the plot dumbs itself down to the most simplistic of simplicities. A storm traps a group of people into a cave, and they must find their way out of it. Or, read from another angle, one might take the film as a beautifully photographed exploration of wondrous caverns, intermixed with tense moments of red-blooded human struggle. Either way, the story resorts to standard, sometimes ridiculous fare (a contrived fight scene late in the film feels out of place), but maintains its ferocious, claustrophobic intensity right up until the bitter end. I’d compare it to holding your breath for two hours, after which you welcome the release. But in a good way.

I can’t say much for the actors themselves, nearly all of the performances, save for Roxburgh’s gritty turn as an aged explorer, suck; so loaded are they with goofy, stereotypical dialogue that every line limps from their mouths, despite efforts to the contrary. Gruffudd in particular pumps his character full of gee-whiz gusto, and he fits the role believably, but when he speaks it sounds as though he’s auditioning for one of those cheesy JG Wentworth commercials (“It’s my money and I need it now!”). Parkinson’s performance suffers at the hands of some truly awful voice-dubbing, while Wakefield can’t seem to decide if he’s a laidback surfer dude, or a jock–though, to be fair, his performance improves the deeper the film delves on.

Audiences entering Sanctum won’t walk out complaining about the performances, though. They’re in it for the show, and to that end Cameron and Grierson deliver. In fact, once the mandatory exposition subsides, a well-paced, expertly crafted thriller emerges, one that pins you to the edge of your seat and blasts you with an adrenaline pumped fire hose of excitement. So enthralled was I that when the lights to the theaters signaled the film’s ending, chewed up nails littered my shirt. Yeah, I dug the film.

I’m not much a fan of thrillers, slasher or otherwise, but stories about people stuck in helpless situations and forced to survive always seem to strike a nerve. Slasher films contain similar elements, but spread them over an open environment, and focus on the grisly demises. The human element is lost amidst a plethora of guts and blood, and a supernatural villain whose bark typically outlasts his bite.

Sanctum pins its characters against believable circumstances, and doesn’t give them an out. You believe all they endure because there’s no alternative to the situation. They can either sit down and hope that somebody finds them, or battle the elements head on. And so, when the group arrives at a room full of churning water, their situation affords tension, not rolled eyes. There were only brief moments when I found myself instructing the personalities onscreen (why not just blow up that damned tank?), but only because the film quite soundly held me in its grasp.

I won’t call Sanctum brilliant, or even classic. It’s not as good as The Descent, Ridley Scott’s Alien, or even Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (which benefited from being true to the events that inspired it), all of which are similar films dealing with hopelessly isolated characters pitted against an unstoppable foe, but I will say it’s better than most thrillers I’ve seen. Forget the dialogue and tepid acting and enjoy the experience. Sanctum is a helluva ride.

Closing Statement
Sanctum doesn’t score any points in the acting departments, but technically it remains a tightly structured, exciting adventure, one that pins you to your seat and never relieves its grasp.

The Verdict
8/10

Predators

OPENING: 07/09/2010

STUDIO: Fox

RUN TIME: 106 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Fear is Reborn

Opening Statement
While I’m a fan of John McTiernan’s savage sci-fi thriller Predator, pretty much everything else about the Predator franchise to date has been uniformly unimpressive. Sure, Predator 2 and even the two Alien vs. Predator movies have their defenders, but to me they all played like weak attempts cash in on the popularity of the original. Now we have Nimrod Antal’s Predators, which easily bests the other sequels but still fails to match the first film.

Facts of the Case
The film begins with our hero (Adrien Brody, The Darjeeling Limited) falling from the sky. He doesn’t seem to know how he got in this predicament, but soon a parachute opens and he floats into a mysterious jungle. Within moments, several others are floating in around him. Brody and the others (a motley crew played by Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Louis Ozawa Changchien and the spectacularly-named Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) tensely introduce themselves, and soon discover that they all have one thing in common: they’re hardened individuals well-equipped for a situation like this. Well, everyone except Topher Grace, who is a mild-mannered doctor.

After some searching, the group makes a startling discovery: they’re not on planet earth anymore. It seems they’ve been transported to another world and dumped into some sort of game preserve. The incredibly deadly aliens that brought them to this place are planning on hunting the humans for sport. And so the fight for survival begins.

The Evidence
It’s clear that those involved in making Predators are big fans of McTiernan’s 1987 film. The jungle setting is near-identical, the structure is very similar and various references are made to that iconic film. Director Nimrod Antal and producer Robert Rodriguez make an impressively valiant effort at recapturing what made the first film so memorable, and they almost succeed. Like the first movie, this one waits a pretty long time before it actually allows the monstrous Predators to appear. This is meant to build suspense, but the one thing the film fails to take into account is that we’re already very familiar with what the Predators are and how they work. Scenes that are nearly mirror images of scenes from the first movie just don’t work as well simply because we’ve already seen them.

Lest you think that I regard the original Predator as a flawless piece of cinema, let me assure you that isn’t the case. That movie has some significant flaws, but it’s quite well-directed and the primitive final half-hour is strong enough to erase one’s memories of the weaker moments. Predators is weak in precisely the areas where the original was strong, as the movie just sort of runs out of steam by the time Adrien Brody gets into mud-coated Predator-hunting mode. The action scenes are directed in a rather generic, uninvolving manner, so it’s only natural that the action-heavy third act would be the weakest.

I had hopes that a gifted actor like Adrien Brody might bring something meaty to the proceedings, but Brody proves surprisingly bland in the central role. Beefing up a bit and adopting Christian Bale’s Batman rasp, Brody humorlessly stomps through the proceedings without making much of an impression. Most of the other actors are one-dimensional character types who each bring a single element of personality to the proceedings. There are some highlights, though: Walton Goggins is gleefully creepy in his turn as a serial killer, while Laurence Fishburne melds his usual gravitas with an appealing loopiness as a man who has been surviving on this planet entirely longer than any human should have to.

If Predators is weak where Predator was strong, it’s only fair to note that Predators is occasionally strong where Predator was weak. Some of the less explosive moments in the film actually manage to resonate, particularly a brief scene between Brody and Braga in which they contemplate whether this new environment is actually better-suited to humans such as themselves. The characters are constantly forced to choose between survival and clinging to whatever they have left of their humanity. They are presented with variations on this choice on numerous occasions, and it’s quietly moving every time.

Closing Statement
I do genuinely appreciate the effort Antal and Rodriguez have put into restoring the franchise; and those who are fans of the series in general should find this one of the more satisfying efforts. I can’t really recommend it to those who aren’t already big fans of Predator, but you could certainly do a lot worse at the movies right now.

The Verdict
6/10

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