I am unashamedly a huge fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I even follow them on twitter, and actually read what they tweet even. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are two of my favorite films, and when you combine that with the fact they were playing a couple of nerds like me in Paul, I was seriously looking forward to this film. I was not disappointed. It's not as brilliant a film as the other aforementioned films, but it was funny, and I enjoyed the nerd moments quite heartily.
This movie is a bit different than their other fair because it is a little more offensive. This guys like satire and spoofing stereotypes and in this one they chose one to make fun off that hits a little to close to home for many people in the bible belt. They chose to poke fun at protestant religious zealotry. I am not convinced the film was completely anti-Christian as much as it was anti-extremist, but, I can see how the argument for either can be made. I think, that, how offended people get by the anti-Christian sentiment depends a little on what kind of Christians you know. The type of Christian made fun of is the Christian that uses by rout arguments to answer anything that doesn't fit into her schema as a perfect fit. To be critical and attack anything that isn't what she believes in, violently and ignorantly. But underneath it all, she is just a superficial hypocrite that desperately wants an excuse to do drugs, swear, and "fornicate" as she puts it. Many people will say that kind of person doesn't exist and they are just trying to label all Christians as this sort of person. Those people, of course, haven't spent much time in NorthEast Arkansas. Perhaps, because I despise seeing this kind of person myself, I took the approach that this film was more that extremes in anything were bad, and there were steps taken to show that a more moderate approach in all views is the better one. The problem is I don't think they made that nearly as clear as they could have. Regardless, I am pretty certain that there isn't much chance that this film is going to piss someone off.
That being said, I still thought the movie was funny, cute, and ended with a feel goody sort of feeling in which every character learned a little more about themselves in the end. The exposure to Seth Rogen was pretty limited, and he didn't have anything to do with the script, which was a good thing. I like him better when he sticks to acting and leaves the writing and directing to someone else. I would recommend this to most any of my nerd friends, but if you have thin skin this one probably isn't for you. It has a lot of aspects to it that would prevent anyone with a good solid background in nerdery from getting a lot of the jokes. It is a bit of a movie that was made for nerds by nerds with a bit of a feel good type story thrown in on top to hook the straights.
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