When one reviews movies from a Catholic perspective, there are two imperatives involved.  First and foremost is staying true to the word of God.  All Christians are called to evangelize in some manner, and in many respects, The Legionnaire is my contribution to that cause.  On the other side of this arbitrary ledger is the burden of honestly assessing a film.  Honesty and Faith go hand-in-hand, so this should not be a difficult proposition.  The conundrum lies in giving credit to a clever movie that contradicts Christianity.  It is a mental exercise I have tackled before, and those of you who regularly read my entries will recognize the pattern.  With Paul (2011), though, this problem is at the forefront of the proceedings and must be recognized at the outset.

Actually, we meet Paul at the outset, the original being with that name, anyway.  It is 1947, and he is a dog belonging to the Walton family, farmers living in Wyoming.  It is their young daughter, Tara Walton (Mia Stallard), who notices Paul’s strange behavior.  She lets him outside, only to witness him getting crushed to death by a flying saucer.  We then cut to modern times and a few hundred miles to the southwest at the San Diego Comic Con.  It is being attended this year by lifelong friends and nerds, Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) and Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg), who are making their dream trip from England for the event.  They are also alien enthusiasts, checking out all the memorabilia at the convention before renting a recreational vehicle (RV) and touring well-known extraterrestrial locations.  Their first stop is a site known as the “black box.”  As they are posing for pictures, they notice a car rapidly approaching.  Assuming that it is a couple of rednecks that hassled them a few hours previously at a diner, and whose truck they had accidentally backed into, they try to get away in the RV.  There is temporary relieved when the other vehicle passes Clive and Graeme and it turns out to not be the men from before, but it soon spins out of control and wrecks on the side of the road.  The tourists do the neighborly thing and pull over to see if anyone is hurt, and they get quite the surprise: a little gray man from outer space calling himself Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen).  Clive immediately faints, but Graeme talks to Paul and learns that the stranger is a rude but nice person in need of help.  Together, Graeme and Paul get Clive into the RV and continue on down the road.  Soon thereafter, we find out the reason for Paul’s urgency.  Looking for the alien is Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil (Jason Bateman), who has been ordered by his boss, known as “The Big Guy” (Sigourney Weaver), to kill the escaped lab patient that is Paul.  Along the way, we are also told that the visitor had been experimented on repeatedly since 1947, but has also been responsible for many cultural and scientific contributions.  Paul has special abilities, such as bringing dead flesh back to life, which we see him do with a bird that hits the RV, only to promptly eat the animal after the miraculous recovery.  The government had gotten everything they want out of Paul except this healing skill, and they are about to murder him to examine his brain for this last bit when he escapes.  Despite traveling with a real alien seemingly being a dream come true for Clive and Graeme, Clive remains apprehensive in dealing with the hitchhiker.  They may be in a part of the United States renowned for unidentified flying objects (UFO), but blending into society with Paul is one of his constant worries.  Luckily, there are many mobile home parks in the area, and the one they stop at is called the Pearly Gates.  We will discuss this more later, but it is there that they are greeted by Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), who is blind in one eye, wearing a patch over the corresponding lens of her glasses.  Her and her father, Moses Buggs (John Carroll Lynch), run the business.  Given these names, I think you can guess their outlook on life.  After their first night, and with the apparent chemistry between Graeme and Ruth, she stops at their lot to discuss how she had noticed three people in their party instead of the two she had originally seen.  The other set of legs are Paul’s, and he finally comes out of the bathroom when she begins defending her faith, which causes her to faint.  Not wanting to draw attention to herself, they decide to take her with them, though Paul is spotted by Moses while retrieving Clive’s passport.  Once more on the lam, but this time with an ultra-Christian conservative as a hostage, Paul is forced to use one of his other abilities.  I am not sure how to describe this, but it is presented as having the ability to telepathically change one’s perspective through touch.  Whatever it is, it alters her thoughts on God, a process clinched when he also heals her eye.  Eventually, they make it to the Walton house, which had been Paul’s goal the entire time.  There they meet the now elderly Tara (Blythe Danner).  They are not long there before they are nearly captured there by Special Agent Zoil and his two comedic relief assistants, Agent Haggard (Bill Hader) and Agent O’Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio).  These latter two have been slowly figuring out that they are chasing an alien and are thus overzealous in their pursuit of Paul, which ends with the Walton homestead being obliterated and both of them dying.  Paul and company take off again, this time heading into the mountains where he is scheduled to be picked up by his people.  Before this can happen, they are intercepted by The Big Guy, though it turns out that Special Agent Zoil had been helping them the entire time.  Before the ship lands, though, Moses finally catches up with everyone and shoots Graeme with his shotgun, intending to kill Paul.  Luckily, Paul has his miraculous hands and resurrects his new friend.  He then takes Tara with him and departs.  We close two years later with Clive and Graeme writing about their adventures and being invited back to the San Diego Comic Con as celebrities.

Clearly, Clive and Graeme are heroes to Paul, and they are rewarded for their selflessness by becoming heroes to a much wider audience.  Us Christians look at the reward for such actions as being heaven.  It may seem farfetched, but them taking in Paul and assisting him on his quest to get home gave me Good Samaritan vibes.  You can find the parable in Luke 10:29-37.  The title person finds an injured priest, taking the victim to an inn and providing for room, board, and treatment.  Essentially, this is what Clive and Graeme do for Paul.  Still, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the other major character, Ruth.  Her and her father spout the kind of clichéd lines one expects from staunchly evangelical Christians, such as the world being only 4,000 years old.  Having an RV park called “The Pearly Gates” is part and parcel of what I am about to describe.  When she comes into the RV and argues with Paul, who is hiding in the bathroom, about Earth being the only place where life exists, he comes out and reveals himself as proof to the contrary.  Following a fainting bout, he does the mind-meld thing with her when she starts calling him a demon.  As clever of a film this is, I find these sequences to be slightly offensive.  I consider myself to be as devout in my belief in God as any other Christian, but I do not subscribe to ideas about space that Hollywood would suggest that people of my so-called ilk accept.  That is because, at least for Catholicism, we believe in science.  There is the flawed thinking that faith and science are mutually exclusive, which is patently false.  For example, some of the biggest scientific ideas in history have come from the Church.  Put simply, God and aliens could, theoretically, co-exist.  That is why Paul being dismissive of Moses saying “God bless you” to the departing alien was the final spoiler.  I enjoyed the clever writing, but it relied too much on Christian stereotypes to be completely enjoyable.

There are other aspects of Paul that are unenjoyable.  While it may seem refreshing to have a more down-to-earth extraterrestrial, his cursing and pot smoking are a little much.  Had they been able to rein in these aspects, you would have had a superior movie.