"OH NO! A BAD MOVIE!"

If you were expecting a great film, you’ll be disappointed. It’s far from great. If you’re a fan of the Pegg-Frost combo, you’ll probably be expecting an exceptional comedy, along the lines of Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. You’ll also leave disappointed. This is a great shame; Paul had the potential to be an excellent film.

So what went wrong? The premise is OK – two geeks from England tour Sci-Fi/Alien landing sites in the US in an RV but encounter a lovable alien (the eponymous lead) and embark on a cat and mouse adventure to get Paul to safety. The film stumbles over its poor plot, hit & miss jokes and a terrible love-interest side plot. Oh, and a lot of the jokes that miss the most seem to be easy homophobic rubbish: “Oh two men travelling in a camper, what are you guys? Some kind of gay?.” Ho. Ho. Ho. Throw on the fire some really bad and facile creationism humour – “let’s deconstruct the design argument for the existence of God in 5 seconds guys” – and you’re left with a Beavis and Butthead Do America and Dude, Where’s My Car? combo, lacking the humour of the former and resembling the latter far too much.

Rating: ★★★★★★½☆☆☆ 

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Avatar AKA Pocahontas in Space

So, like some others no doubt, I was ‘invited’ to an advanced screening of 15 minutes of Avatar footage. I have deliberately avoided reading about or watching trailers for the film, hoping to keep a bit of the plot tucked away. How could I reconcile that with my innate love of IMAX and modern 3D movies? I couldn’t, so I snapped up the tickets and made my way to Waterloo.

I turned up late. Whoops. Yet how fortuitous! The 10.00am screener had been backed; our 10.20 am showing had about 50 seats filled, which meant my pick. Warning: if you do go watch this in Waterloo make sure to sit fairly far back (probably beyond row J).

The preview started with a little introductory message from James Cameron, who looked dead tired. He gave a one line plot summary then told us to enjoy the preview. And then it began.

There were five or six scenes in the movie which revealed enough to give an idea about the plot and showcase some action. True to form, the CG is excellent, potentially groundbreaking. The plot? Not so much.

From what I could make out: a crippled soldier called ‘Sully’ (played by Sam Worthington) volunteers for some sort of military scientific experiement which either implants your mind in the body of a type of alien, or allows you to telepathically control it. We see him get to like walking again and then bam, we’re back in action, with a CG-athon of alien animals. We haven’t seen enough of those in recent Sci-Fi memory *cough*Star Wars Episodes I + II *cough* Star Trek.

Now, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the plot looks roughly like it might be:

Civilised-but-crippled (just physically?) white man gets out of his depth in an alien world, has his life saved by a native woman (with a strange accent!), slowly assimilates into their culture and way of living managing inexplicably to better the natives at their own way of life before, for some reason, the white civilised culture (with token ethnic characters) tries to ‘save’ or attempts to eradicate the native population.  

It feels like James Cameron has feasted down on everything in modern Sci-fi canon, snacked on some Disney movies and crapped out Avatar. You’ll see elements from (Disney’s) Pocahontas, Apocalypto,  Dances With Wolves and take your pick of any of the Star Wars Movies. This does not bode well. The racist undertones are disconcerting and the plot looks like it’s going to be cliched to hell. I don’t think Sam Worthington’s a good enough (or interesting enough) an actor to carry a big-budget movie.

On the other hand the CG’s pretty good. Is it really worth the reported $240,000,000 budget? I don’t think so.

Like a chump, I’ll still go see it in the cinema. I wonder if it will exceed my expectations?

Until then – here’s the trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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