Paul - Greg Mottola - 15 - 103 mins

'Hilarious', 'funny', even 'mildly amusing': this film is none of these. If I hadn't already seen Gulliver's Travels this would be the worst film of the year. I  expected much more from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from their latest take on cinema genres than this flabby piece of scriptwriting that is really only half-hour sitcom material.  Our eponymous hero Paul is a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking alien E.T. dude voiced by Seth Rogen (so no need to get into character there then) who, having escaped from Roswell captivity and being pursued by the MIB, enlists the help of sci-fi geeks Pegg and Frost in getting back to his home planet. O.K. so maybe I wasn't expecting originality and to that extent the film does ewhat it says on the tin but the film is largely about  in-joke sci-fi referencing (and given what goes on before,the 'shock' entry by Sigourney Weaver in the final scene is so obvious)  and far too little about actually making the audience laugh. The other problem with this film is that it's vehemently anti-Christian sub-text is relentlessly rammed home with all the subtlety of Jeremy Paxman attempting a frontal lobotomy with an exocet missile. All in all, hugely disappointing.