On the road with an alien

Slam one down on the bar, scoop in some crushed ice and finish with a slug of grenadine. Paul is straight from the cocktail school of cinema. Which is to say, it contains a handful of familiar ingredients — the buddy movie, the road movie, Star Trek, stoner gags, granite-jawed FBI agents — all swept into the blender and spun, shaken and stirred into something that, in the end, turns out quite differently. Even by the brash standards of other sci-fi comedies, from Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) to Galaxy Quest (1999), this film has chutzpah, delirious chutzpah.

Most of that chutzpah, and a good slice of the deliriousness, comes from the central pairing of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost — Paul’s leading actors, as well as its authors. Here, they transplant the endearing double act that they forged in the Channel 4 series Spaced (1999–2001), and tempered in Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007), to American soil.