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88The film -- lame of title but big on fun.
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83Graeme and Clive, representatives of a nation of nonbelievers in UFOs and big dinner portions, come to the psychic capital of a country that wants to believe, and they're transformed. In Paul, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do likewise, in celebration of what the Spielbergian cosmos is all about.
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80Paul is a close encounter with the comic brilliance of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost that makes going to the movies fun again.
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Mar 18, 201180A good-hearted, funny movie.
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Mar 16, 201180A celebration of sci-fi flicks, fanboys and good, old-fashioned bromance, Paul is a thoroughly enjoyable road trip.
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80Affectionate, funny and action-packed sci-fi spoof.
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80Broader and more accessible than either "Shaun Of The Dead" or "Hot Fuzz," Paul is pure Pegg and Frost - clever, cheeky and very, very funny. You'll never look at E. T. in the same way again.
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75The special effects budget is on the high side but those effects serve the story rather than the other way around, and Paul is all the better for it.
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75The movie, despite what you may have gathered from the goofy trailer, is more sweet than silly.
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75Rogen is a nonstop hoot, but it's the byplay between Frost and Pegg that roots the laughs in characters we care about. That's right: characters. No anal probes.
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75Bateman has rarely had the opportunity to play a snarling lawman, but with his cool aviators and his bristling putdowns he's perfect, too.
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75Scabrously funny yet essentially gentle, as the main thing that it's probing is our collective ignorance.
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75This is a well-made, well-plotted and sensitive movie.
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75Paul is a little sloppy and a little sappy, but the filmmakers' passion for their subject matter carries it over the occasional rough spot.
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70The third and least original of the Pegg-Frost features, but it's still a lot funnier than most films of its ilk.
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70After the sharp bite and harsh light of most American-style guy-based funny films today, Paul comes as such sweet relief.
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Mar 17, 201170Fortunately, the movie is studded with performances that demonstrate the cast's skills, such as Kristen Wiig's soggy white-bread delusional Christian Ruth.
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63Here's a movie that teeters on the edge of being really pretty good and loses its way.
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63Some of the later scenes capture the spirit of majestic sweetness of "Close Encouners of the Third Kind" and "E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial" period, but the elevated moments don't last. They're relentlessly undermined by the f-bombs, groin kicks, and anal-probing jokes.
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63Where Paul takes off is in its embrace and knowledge of sci-fi icons.
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63There's only so much humor you can wring from the f-bomb, even if you are a cute animated alien.
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60A decent comedy, good-natured if unspecial, amusing if rarely hilarious.
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58The crudeness with which Mottola made "Superbad" suited that film; here, a similarly rudimentary technique detracts and distracts.
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50Paul is offensive solely for being so underachieving.
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50While Paul seems great conceptually, he's not particularly interesting or surprising.
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50Not bad, but certainly not good; classify the movie as lazy fun.
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50The derriere-flashing, dope-smoking, potty-mouthed antics of this antisocial E.T. justify every bit of the rating that the MPAA has slapped on him.
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50A big fat geek kiss to the movies of Steven Spielberg and his fanboys, Paul is a mild, meandering comedy.
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50The script avoids going full-bore as satire. Where it goes instead lacks a purpose, a reason for being, beyond the usual name-checking of "The X-Files" and the like.
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50The script is a veritable cosmos of Spielberg in-jokes, but the writer-stars also make room for some vicious and decidedly English digs at red-state shit-kickers and Christian fundamentalists.
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50This is the smart-ass stoner's "E.T.," the movie the fanboy parent won't be able to hand down like some tattered, squeaky-clean memento to their action-figure-collecting kids. It's just not quite right without Wright, who could have helped Frost and Pegg stuff Mel Brooks back into their Han Solo Underoos.
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50Part bromance, part sci-fi spoof and all a bit disappointing.
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40The hit-to-miss gag ratio is atrocious, and we spend most of the movie hanging out with these borderline-agreeable characters, waiting for something to happen.
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40The title character himself is also an unimpressive digital creation-Rogen might as well be performing his stoner-from-another-world shtick during a wee-hours movieoke session.
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40Feels at once secondhand in its eagerness and unknowing in its scorn.
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38Never achieves the exhilarating feat of exemplifying the types of Hollywood movies it wants to unpack.
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25British satire loses something when it's handled by Americans: You miss the perspective that a foreign culture brings, so instead of wit and humor, you end up trafficking in self-congratulatory clichés and sentiment.