Review of Paul (2011) by Shiira — 25 Mar 2011

Deep in the recesses of an Area 51 warehouse, a CIA-employed "little green man" has none other than Steven Spielberg on the line, discussing with the filmmaker, hot on the heels of his first Indiana Jones movie, what he should film next.

Seated at his regulation government desk, Paul(Seth Rogen), the driving force behind all the important scientific and sociological achievements of the past fifty years, gives Spielberg the idea for "E.

T.: The Extra-Terrestrial", the 1982 classic that turns out to be, not a work of fiction, but a biopic about Paul's first contact with earthlings upon his arrival from the skies beyond. Clive Gollings(Nick Frost), a British sci-fi writer on nerd holiday with his fellow Comic-Con conventioneer Graeme(Simon Pegg), had no doubt seen "E.

T." as a tiny lad in some rundown London bijou, but it's the Spielberg knockoff "Mac & Me", the 1988 Stewart Raffill "commercial" that took the marketing practice of product placement to a whole other level, which inspired him down the road to write speculative fiction and sci-fi based comic books.

Considering that Paul has such a prodigious grasp of the American popular culture(he takes credit for creating Fox Mulder), the savvy moviegoer would expect the hyper-urban alien to be outraged when Clive speaks of him in the same light as the "Mysterious Alien Creature", Mac for short, whose caretakers keep alive by supplying the co-opted alien with Coke after Coke after Coke.

With his mouth fixed in a perpetual "O", Mac has the unintended look of a stroke victim. Hillariously, since Mac can't move his mouth, the furnished soda cans are always equipped with a straw for easy sipping, as a means to help offset the considerable limitations of the completely manual puppet.

Unlike Mac who can't talk(you need facial gestures to do that), and most conspicuously, eat(ditto), Paul, on the other hand, yet another triumph of CGI technology, acts and sounds like your typical American male beset with arrested development, and in a wicked send-up of the titular character in John Carpenter's "Starman", eats what he regenerates.

Paul may be a little on the crude side, but he never forgot his first love, Tara, whom the alien tried to make amends with over the intervening years through the cinematic arts. (In a bit of fun, fictive movie revisionism, Elliott was supposedly based on Tara.

) Although Paul couldn't save the dog his ship landed on during that long ago crash landing, the alien brings the hound's memory back alive, so to speak, through the redemptive powers of film. In the final moments of "E.

T.: The Extra Terrestrial", Elliott's dog trots up the ramp to the departing spacecraft, then thinks better of it and turns around. When Tara(Blythe Danner), the little girl who nursed Paul back to health, traverses the same sort of steps(toward Paul's ship) as that celluloidal dog, the seemingly accidental movements of a restless animal in the Spielberg film now takes on a less spontaneous appearance.

Turns out the whole damn thing was scripted, a personal aside, from Paul to Tara, as an apology for taking her cherished pet away with his reckless piloting, by foregrounding the dog for a brief moment amidst the tearful goodbyes between E.

T. and his humans. "E.T." is a very personal movie for Paul, thus Clive's childhood fascination with "Mac and Me"(co-starring Ronald McDonald as himself) must stick in his crawl, but he remains respectfully quiet, perhaps even, suspiciously so.

That's because "Mac & Me" was his idea too. It's the only explanation. He's just too embarrassed to own up to it. At the end of the Christine Ebersole vehicle, the family of mysterious alien creatures gets sworn in as American citizens, therefore choosing Earth over returning back to their desert-like planet.

Paul, who probably could have quit his bureaucratic job anytime he wanted to, decides that he prefers his adopted home, as well. These two movies: "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" and "Mac & Me", reflect the breadth of Paul's earthly experiences; starting off as a stranger in a strange land and ending with a successful transition into fruitful assimilation.