Posted on 03/23/2011 10:54:23 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you are worried about spoilers, relax. In the first place, Paul is an utterly predictable parody of E.T. Only if you haven't seen the latter will anything come as a surprise and in that case you'd be missing the point. In the second place, Paul is one of the most offensive movies I have ever seen. If I am spoiling it for you, you probably deserve it.
Paul stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who also wrote the screenplay. These two limey clowns were responsible for Shaun of the Dead, a brilliant parody of the zombie genre. SOTD managed to lampoon the zombie movie while preserving some of its visceral force. That was an achievement. I was hoping for something at least as genuinely funny tonight. What I got was, at its best moments, E.T. with a foul mouth, a smoking joint in one hand, and an extended middle finger in the other. I also got something much uglier.
Pegg and Frost play two comic book nerds on a dream vacation in America. They attend a Sci-Fi convention in San Diego and then set out in a rented RV for a tour of our most famous UFO sites. On the way they pick up Paul: a real live Alien escaped from Area 51 who has managed to phone home. He needs to get to a secret spot (Devils Tower) where he can be picked up by his homies. They also pick up a girl. Pegg's Graeme Willy connects with her. They are pursued by a trio of men in black, commanded by Sigourney Weaver.
Paul is a standard issue Area 51 alien: he has a large cranium tear drop head and stands about four feet tall. He has the power to resurrect the dead. In one scene he brings a dead bird to life and then promptly eats it. That would be inventive if it weren't stolen from Shrek. You would have to be asleep not to guess, at that moment, that Paul would use that same power to save one of the characters later. You would be sound asleep if you didn't expect that, at the end, a flying saucer would show up to take Paul home.
All that was mildly entertaining and very funny in spots, if not quite funny enough. Unfortunately, the writers weren't as interested in being funny as they were in expressing their utter contempt for America in general and Christians in particular.
In a café devoted to UFO culture, our heroes encounter two belligerent, homophobic rednecks. A bit down the road they encounter a sheriff who, upon learning they are English, expresses his dismay that British cops don't carry guns. "How can they shoot people?" he asks, disdainfully. That's what Pegg and Frost think of America. Just in case we don't get the point, we see an image of George Bush (41) on their laptop with a derisive slogan attached.
When our heroes pick up the girl, she is managing an RV park. She is wearing a t-shirt depicting Jesus shooting Darwin. She believes the earth is 4,000 years old and cannot believe in other worlds. She is blind in one eye. Subsequent dialogue makes it clear that she and her Bible toting, gun wielding father are retrograde, evolutionarily slow creatures. The comic nerds are, of course, more advanced. E.T., foul mouthed and stoned, is where evolution is going. In short order extraterrestrial Paul cures her. Her blind eye is restored. She immediately learns how to weave profanity into everything she says and she wants to have lots of sex. At the end she declares she has been liberated. That's progress!
Paul is a work of left wing bigotry. Young Earthers, and probably all Christians, aren't just wrong: they are stunted people. Probably half of Americans are right wing, Bible besotted, gun clinging Neanderthals. This message is delivered throughout the movie and reemphasized at its end. If this movie had put fundamentalist Muslims in place of fundamentalist Christians, Pegg and Frost would be on trial in Europe.
I will confess that this movie offended me for personal reasons. I am a Darwinist by training and inclination. I am a professor of political science and philosophy and I teach Darwin's theory in both contexts. I have many students who are resistant to evolutionary theory for religious reasons. I occasionally have students who believe in literal or even young Earth versions of Biblical faith.
It's my job to respect their persons and their beliefs. In fact, that isn't hard. I know for a fact that even the Biblical literalists are frequently both intelligent and admirable people. They have to be. The larger culture around them keeps telling them they are inferior and that they ought to get with the program. They manage to say no to power, which is something that liberals claim to admire but don't.
I try to show my students that Biblical Religion and Darwinian theory are not mutually exclusive. I try to show them that, even if they can't accept the evolutionary account of human origins, they can still see natural selection at work in creation and use Darwin's theory at least in an instrumental way.
And then along comes a movie that tells them that they are idiots. Their pastors have been telling them that evolutionary theory is just another religion and along come Pegg and Frost to shout that anyone who does not believe in evolution is a retarded heretic.
I didn't like this movie.
Was interesting in Ben Stein’s film when he had Dawkins suggesting humans came from aliens.
Leftists will accept anything except the truth. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
One thing they aren't though is Biblical literalists. Genesis says that God commanded the earth to bring forth grass, and the earth brought forth grass. That's an executive commander, not an intelligent designer.
That WAS a very interesting interview. So interesting in fact that I bought the DVD so I could watch it again. Much to my disappointment, the interview seemed to me to have been edited down in the DVD version, as it was very short, and not the way I remembered it. There was quite a bit of interplay between Stein and Dawkins on the very point that you mention, as I remember the movie, and this was missing on the DVD. I'm not sure what it would take to convince me I'm wrong, because it would be hard certify something as the true and original theatrical release.
The hell they aren't!
They certainly tipped their ideological hand with the ending of that movie. Recall that at the end "everything was OK" but Shaun was keeping his zombie friend under wraps. Here you had an image of modern western society with a clandestine zombie component. Who would they have had in mind?
I would agree with you that “Biblical religion” is incompatible with Darwinian theory, but I would submit that the Bible, or specifically Genesis, considered as a text, is not only compatible with evolution, but distinctly evolutionary in its form, and even its tone.
In my mind, I see a parallel with the conflict of medieval Aristotelianism with emergent renaissance science. Galileo argued that Aristotle himself would have embraced his views, and it was only the “peripatetics” who had cast his teaching into rigid doctrine.
Totally & completely disagree
It’s quite plain in the progression of Days from chaos to geographical form to plant life, then animal life and finally man. How obvious does it have to be?
There’s only so far you can go lampooning other movies and genres. “Shaun of the dead” was very good, but I didn’t think much of “Hot Fuzz” (satirising buddy cop movies) and I think I will give “Paul” a pass. I will think they are brilliant when they can do an original comedy script.
I think that far too many people get wound up in an either/or debate on Creationism vs Darwinism. I think that it could easily be both.
Darwinism makes perfect sense, when an organism adapts better to its environment, of course it will thrive.
Who's controlling the adaptations, though? Are "random genetic mutations" truly random?
“I try to show my students that Biblical Religion and Darwinian theory are not mutually exclusive. I try to show them that, even if they can’t accept the evolutionary account of human origins, they can still see natural selection at work in creation and use Darwin’s theory at least in an instrumental way.”
The author is wrong. Biblical origin and Darwinian theory are mutually exclusive. Natural selection is not evolution. It is not an alligator changing into a crane. It’s a salt water alligator changing into a fresh water alligator. It is not one species changing into another. It’s one species changing to meet the local environment.
I will say this about the movie.
The anti-Christian screed was offensive. I half expected it when the female character came out wearing the Jesus shooting Darwin T-shirt, which I found rather funny because it shows the anti-Christian bias of the writers for what it is.
As far as anti-American, I didn’t really catch that. Both main characters repeatedly said how happy they were to be in America, and how they had dreamed of it their whole life.
The whole gay joke was that everyone they met thought they were gay, and they had to keep denying it.
The best part of the movie was the references to SciFi and pop culture of the last 45 - 50 years. You really need to be in your 40’s to catch all the subtle jokes in the film.
For instance they walk into a redneck Roadhouse in NV, WY, and the house band is playing the music from the bar in Star Wars, and the spaceship Paul leaves in is the Guitar shaped craft used on the Boston albums. The point being, and demonstrated by a not so subtle phone conversation between Paul, and Steven Spielberg, was that Paul was the influence for a lot of pop culture, and scientific advancement.
It was supposed to look like E.T. because Paul influenced E.T.’s creation.
Simon Pegg is funny, in a dry British humor style, and Paul is a rude vulgar little snot who still comes off funny.
Sometimes, a movie is just a movie. Everyone has their own bias, and we know what Hollywood’s is. This movie is not the best, but it wasn’t the worst. Not a bad matinee.
Please let’s just not miss the point, guys it’s not about Biblical Religion and Darwinian theory. What they’re passing through this movie to children’s minds can only be called appalling. It’s not only about Paul, pick any newly, or old, released movie and you’ll find tons of the same poisonous contents and misleading ideas to feed the chaos they created, pick any song, any TV show..etc People are being hypnotized by those giant screens and receiving all kinds of lethal moral solvents without even being conscious to the amount of nonsense that’s being shoved down their throats.
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing’
Are you doing anything about this?
The thing that pissed me off the most about this movie was a comment Paul made at the end of the movie. The previously blind woman’s Dad said to Paul, “God Bless you” and Paul said, “Yea whatever dude”. Not just the response but the disdain in his vocal tone. This reallllly left a bad taste in my mouth and made me angry. I’m a Christian and I won’t apologize for it. I liked the movie for the most part. I even like their previous movies. In the future I’ll think twice about watching any of their future movies. If hollywood and other parts of the world can’t accept our religious beliefs and our way of life the way we accept and tolerate theirs. The way I see it, that’s bullshit. Well, I’ll pray for them and hope the best for them. Also, to be more descriptive of my Christianity I don’t belief I have a guaranteed place in heaven already. I only hope and pray that is a reality for me some day. God Bless you hollywood and England, etc.
“The thing that pissed me off the most about this movie was a comment Paul made at the end of the movie. The previously blind woman’s Dad said to Paul, “God Bless you” and Paul said, “Yea whatever dude”.”
odd, that was my favoritest part of the movie. many people actually completely dismiss the bronze aged book and superstition while at the same time believe in some sort of higher power.
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