Rhapsodies

It seems like a good idea at the time. Last week’s selection was kind of depressing. Therefore I decided to clear my palate I wanted some light, fluffy comedies. Regrettably, I did not plan ahead enough to go into the particulars. All I knew was I wanted to do some form of comedy I had not done before. So I was browsing in Scarecrow’s comedy room, hoping to get something resembiling inspiration and I stumbled over Paul on the shelves. So I decided to do comedies about Alien encounters. 

The only problem with this plan was I had seen nearly every single movie that remotely fit that description. ( And not many of them are very good anyway) 

The film I finally I chose, Bruce Kimmel’s The Creature That Wasn’t Nice, more frequently marketed as Naked Space, because it stars Leslie Nielsen, despite being filmed about four years before any of the Naked Gun series came out. Since I like Leslie Nielsen’s films no matter how dumb they frequently are, I decided to take a chance. Like I said it seems like a good idea at the time. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A band of intrepid space explorers land on a planet, unintentionally bring back an Alien sample, sample grows into huge slavering monster, runs amok in the ship killing everybody. The monster is killed by the last remaining crew members. 

There really isn’t anything I can say to defend this film. This isn’t direct to video bad, it’s watch on Mystery Science Theater 3000 bad. The performances are wooden, the script is nonexistent, and most of the time they’re not even trying with sets or anything to convince us of the setting. I’ve seen low budget fan films with bigger budgets.

There are a few scenes that save it from being pure torture. Most notably the monster singing “I want to eat your face“ and the clueless idealist of a ship scientist’s (as the son of a scientist, one of my least favorite clichés in science fiction) reaction to the song. Leading one of the others to ask him if he’d even listened to the lyrics. 

The next film on my list, and  the film that inspired this double feature,  Greg Mottola’s Paul written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost with Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen, tells the stories about Graeme and Clive, a pair of British comics and alien enthusiasts (Peg and Frost) who have come to the states to attend Comic-Con. on the way home, they rent a motorhome and take a road trip through UFO country. On the way, they run into Paul, (Voiced by Rogen) the original gray alien who’s just busted out of Area 51. Paul is a bit of a jerk but a nice guy, and apparently all of the alien mythology of the twentieth century is based around him. 

Now our heroes find themselves being chased by Government agents, hillbillies and religious fanatics to get Paul home before it’s too late. 

My basic reaction to this film was Meh. I normally like just about anything that Simon Peg and Nick Frost are in. They don’t disappoint playing wide-eyed outsiders in the United States for the first time. Paul is quite convincing with good animation and texture and with Seth Rogen’s performance, you are almost fooled. ( Provided you believe in aliens) Beyond that, it’s just your standard by the numbers buddies on the road film. It’s good for something to watch on the background, but for the most part, there’s not much to recommend it.