Paul (Two and a Half Stars)
U. S.: Greg Mottola, 2011  (Universal)

Suppose you were to rethink E. T. as a combination 70s road movie and Three Days of the Condor-style paranoid anti-C.I.A. thriller, with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, of Shaun of the Dead as a couple of RV-riding, geek-slacker Brits named Graeme Willy (Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Frost), who make up a comic book artist-writer team, and Seth Rogen as the voice of a little green man/E.T. named Paul, who’s even more of a geek-slacker than they are.

Kristen Wiig is the romantic interest, Ruth Buggs, a skinny gal with a deformed eye and a bible thumping pa (John Carroll Lynch) who’s chasing them all, and a new-found fascination with four-letter words. (She’s more romantic, and a lot funnier, in Bridesmaids.) And Jason Bateman is one of the spooks. And Blythe Danner is an old-time UFO-spotter. And, oh yeah, Sigourney Weaver, in a gown, is the main government villain, The Big Guy.

It sounds sort of funny. But, as written by Pegg and Frost, and directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), it’s sometimes a little witty, sometimes a little campy or likably slap-sticky, but more often scruffy-looking, forced and obvious.  The magnum opus graphic novel of Graeme and Clive, for example, has a cover sporting an alien supergal with three breasts, but not one memorable bra joke. For some reason, creationism gets them all angry. And little Paul keeps making smart-ass remarks and exposing himself to unwise scrutiny.

Yeah, I know a lot of people liked this. Didn’t help me any. I hate to say this, but this movie could have used Ricky Gervais, maybe as the guys’ acerbic and cynical asshole of an agent. He could have won points by insulting everybody, and maybe betraying them, and getting smooshed. Or maybe the movie would have been better with Edgar Wright (the other “Shaun” guy) directing it, but why would he have wanted to, for reasons other than companionship or an unwise wager?

Oh yeah, Steven Spielberg is in this thing too. As Steven Spielberg. I’m afraid he can’t tip the balance.

Mars Needs Moms (Two and a Half Stars)

U.S.: Simon Wells, 2011 (Walt Disney)

Mars Needs Moms, which takes its title from the infamous 1968 Mars Needs Women, starring Tommy Kirk, is a pretty good feature cartoon, and that points up again how generally better, and smarter, animated features are these days. It’s about an adventurous  boy (voiced by Seth Green), who hitches a ride to Mars, when his  mom (Joan Cusack, who’s very, very good) is kidnapped by the Martians. These Marsmen run a regimented society, bossed by the tyrannical Supervisor (Mindy Sterling, of “Austin Power“ land) and they need to steal a mom every once in a while, for maternal help, in getting their divided sexes to grow up.

The movie was directed and co-written (with wife Wendy Wells) by Simon Wells, great grand-son of H. G. Wells, and the director of the 2002 film of his great grand-dad’s The Time Machine.  Robert Zemeckis was one of the producers, and the movie was done in the motion capture process (refined here to something called “emotion capture”) that Zemeckis used for The Polar Express and the Jim Carrey A Christmas Carol — which means the actors supplied some movements and expressions as well as the voices for their characters.

It’s an okay movie, as I say. And Cusack, as I say is gangbusters as the movie’s mom. But there’s another performance that really is incredible, fantastic: Dan Fogler as a chubby Earthling faddist, enthusiast and gimmick-guy on Mars called Gribble. Fogler has been in a handful of movies including some bad ones (where he was good) like the current Take Me Home Tonight, which I reviewed (badly) last week. He usually plays overweight sidekicks, awash in pop culture shtick, which is what he is here. “Awesome” and “totally” are two of Gribble’s favorite words.

But Gribble has more: a spontaneity, wild humor and a sweet, flakey quality that makes this role really shine, creates a star-making turn. At first, as I was watching him, I was convinced he wasbeing voiced by my old L. A. Weekly pal, movie critic F. X. Feeney, and I almost called him up afterwards. (Just kidding.) He also reminded me of an old chum of mine at the University of Wisconsin, the late Don “Sluggo” Carlson. At any rate, I was totally convinced Gribble was a real person. And that’s what acting totally is. Awesome.

It’s easy, or at any rate easier, to look terrific with a great, well-written part, with something like, say, The King’s Speech, The Social Network or True Grit. It’s harder to be superb in schlock or flawed movies like Fanboys, Take Me Home Tonight and even “Mars Needs Moms,“ all Fogler credits. Or when you‘re making some of it up yourself. (Some of “Mars” seems improvised.) But Fogler, whom I had ignorantly sort of dismissed as a mini-Jack Black, has the stuff, totally. Gribble is a great job. Even though Mars Needs Moms is a cartoon sci-fi fantasy, you laugh and feel for this crazy irrepressible babble-mouth shlump-a-clump. (Not that my pals F. X., or Sluggo, ever babbled, or schlumped, or clumped. But they could have voiced Gribble too.) I’m sure other people and critics are noticing this part, and that Fogler has been noticed lots of times before, for his Spelling Bee play, and others. But now I can say you heard it here. Not necessarily first. But you heard it.

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