Paul

I went to see this movie earlier tonight, on opening day. I had to. Consider just some of its attractions:

* Simon Pegg. I've been a fan of his since Shaun of the Dead. I also strongly support his position on traditional zombie values.

* Nick Frost. He and Pegg have a friendship that shines through in their buddy films.

* It's a road-trip film. I'm a sucker for them. Add the fact that the journey is to save an alien (the title character) from ruthless government pursuers, and you have a fine starting point for a run down the back roads of the USA's UFO heartland.

* Their adventure starts at the San Diego Comic-Con. I've always wanted to attend this con, and it is one of the geek meccas.

* It's full of fan-boy in-jokes. I'm quite sure I didn't catch them all, and I caught a lot of them. I'm clearly in its target demographic.

Though my attendance was certain, my reaction was not. I feared the movie would be simply too dumb for me to enjoy.

It wasn't, though at times it veered mighty close to the cliff edge of stupidity. To avoid being annoyed at those moments, I had to check my disbelief at the theater door, turn down my mental processing speed, and accept the movie for the silly bit of fun that it was.

Fortunately, I did all of those things, so I had a fine time watching Paul.

I've been saying similar things about a lot of films lately, and that's sad. I'm completely willing to sign up for and enjoy fluffy entertainment, but I'm beginning to crave the intelligent, well-plotted action or comedy movie with characters who are real and stories that make sense.

Until one of those pops up, though, check out Paul. If you're at all an SF fan-boy or fan-girl, you'll enjoy it.