I won’t say I’m exactly a Simon Pegg “fan,” having only seen (to date) four of his films—and half of those in the past 4 days—but I find him an amusing, multi-talented actor-writer who first came to international (and my) attention with Shaun of the Dead.  Not entirely coincidentally, the last two films I’ve watched were two Pegg-pictures, Paul and Burke and Hare.

Paul was co-written by Pegg and pal Nick Frost, and directed by Paul Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland).  I went in with some trepidation after reading lukewarm reviews: I’d heard there were too many in-jokes, the plot was predictable, the humour lukewarm.  But to my relief,  while I wasn’t left gasping and spent on the floor of the cinema after 90 minutes of hysterical laughter, Paul proved to be a pleasant experience overall, with nary a dull moment.  

The plot is simple: Clive and Graeme, respectively a British writer and illustrator of science fiction books, visit the famous Comic Con in San Diego and then set off on a pilgrimage to various “alien encounter” sites in the American Southwest.  They meet Paul, a (space) ship-wrecked alien who’s been in government custody for six decades but has decided to go home before he can become the subject of an alien autopsy.  However, some men in black are on Paul’s trail…

It is true that the film’s comedy is very mild and somewhat repetitive, with slightly too much faith placed on the inherent comic value of profanity and related, rude, sophomoric “shock” material.  I also feared the script would rely too much on “wacky American” stereotypes, but after a brief flurry of these in the early part of the movie, they’re largely set aside and the culture-clash concept of “two British nerds on a road trip in the USA” is jettisoned for the chase scenario.  The physical action is handled well, but there isn’t much in the way of physical humour (indeed, the action and violence is played straight, with some major characters meeting their deaths on-screen).

Essentially, much of the humour in Paul comes from the characters and their interactions rather than elements such as the “plot,” “jokes,” “sight gags,” etc. (although there are a few funny examples in each of these categories).  When a visually-impaired fundamentalist Christian is referred to as a “God-bothering Cyclops,” or Graeme uses Clive’s nickname (“Sausage”), or pompous author Adam Shadowchild brusquely dismisses his adoring fans (“Are you buying a book? No?  Then, f—- off!”), these are genuinely amusing moments, worth much more than nod-wink-wink jokes about Paul asking for Reese’s Pieces or a running gag about the multi-breasted alien woman on the cover of Clive’s novel.

The plethora of movie references I’d been led to expect is actually rather muted.  The in-jokes are there for those who know, but this isn’t an Epic Movie or Meet the Spartans-style comedy, and Paul works even for those without an encyclopedic knowledge of science-fiction movies of the 1970s and ’80s.

Paul, voiced by Seth Rogen, is a wise-ass, pot-smoking, occasionally-invisible, touch-healing alien.  Not quite as iconoclastic as, say, Alf (although Paul does eat live birds, perhaps an homage to Alf’s appetite for housecats), the CGI-rendered creature is a believable character but—not surprisingly, given the fact Pegg and Frost are writers/stars—the focus is not primarily on the stoner alien.  Paul is more of an ensemble comedy, with everyone sharing the spotlight: Paul, Clive, Graeme, fundamentalist Ruth (“cured” both of her irrational, oppressive religious faith and physically by Paul’s magic touch), grim pursuer Agent Zoil, dumb-ass pursuers Haggard and O’Reilly (who are treated rather unfairly by the script, meeting fiery demises), etc.  This seems to work: though we don’t get to know any of the characters really well, the little glimpses we are given of their personalities are effective and revealing.  Still, Ruth seems to discard her Christian beliefs rather easily; it’s not clear how Clive and Graeme make their living (or even how old they are supposed to be); the nature of Paul’s “employment” with the government isn’t explained consistently or logically, changing whenever a joke is needed (he chats on the phone with Steven Spielberg with plot ideas for E.T., for instance); and so on.  In other words, lots of plot holes, stuff left unsaid, etc.  

But it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Paul is a slight, mild, forgettable but generally enjoyable, good-spirited and unpretentious comedy.

 *****

Burke and Hare isn’t really a “Simon Pegg movie,” though he plays one of the leading roles: it’s a straight-forward version of the familiar body-snatching tale, set in 1828 Edinburgh.  Impeccably produced and acted, the film is entertaining but I cannot see much commercial potential in the United States for a period film with no “name” stars (Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg are talented and respectable but between them probably wouldn’t sell a hundred tickets to Americans).  [Note: in the UK—where Burke and Hare was released last fall—the film had a decent first week then faded quickly.]  

Although characterised as a “black comedy,” Burke and Hare is one of those subtle British comedy films—with a definite Ealing vibe—rather than a farce or spoof or slapstick effort.  Only a very slight shift in tone and emphasis would be required to make this a completely serious work: don’t expect unbridled shenanigans, pratfalls (well, maybe one or two), or other obvious “jokes.”  This is by no means negative criticism on my part, since I thoroughly enjoyed the picture; take my comments instead as a counterweight to the advertisements selling this as a laugh-filled, full-blown comedy.  The Hangover or even Paul, it’s not.

Burke and Hare are two Irish n’er-do-wells trying to scrape together a living in early 19th-century Edinburgh.  When their last source of income—a boarder—dies, the two men go to great pains to dispose of the body, only to discover there is actually a market for human remains: medical schools in need of anatomical specimens.  Since Dr. Monro has a monopoly on the corpses of executed criminals, his rival Dr. Knox must purchase bodies from the “resurrectionists,” who exhume buried bodies.  Knox is working on a photographic “map of the human body” to present to the King, and informs Burke and Hare he will purchase any further corpses they might encounter.

Hare, the less-scrupulous member of the team, decides that, if dead bodies can’t be found, they must be created, so he and his partner embark on a murder spree.  Various complications ensue, Burke falls in love with actress Ginny Hawkins who needs financing for her all-female production of “Macbeth,” a local gangster cuts himself in on the action, and so on.  All does not end well, suffice it to say.

Burke and Hare is populated by the usual splendid cast of British performers, including Tom Wilkinson as Dr. Knox, Isla Fisher, Tim Curry, Christopher Lee (a nice cameo), and the wonderful Ronnie Corbett as the diminuitive militia captain who doggedly pursues the serial killers.  Pegg and Serkis are fine, of course, but (as with Paul), the two main protagonists don’t monopolise the spotlight, and the film is certainly not something akin to a Hope and Crosby or Abbott and Costello “comedic duo” effort.

Not obvious to the casual viewer but revealed in the end credits are cameos from famed animator Ray Harryhausen, cinematographer Robert Paynter, and director Costa Gavras (sadly, both Harryhausen and Paynter have died since the film was made).   Burke and Hare was directed by John Landis, who dropped off the feature-film radar screen over a decade ago.  Landis made a number of wildly popular and influential comedies in the 1970s and 1980s—Animal House, An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers—but had not directed a theatrical feature since 1998.  He doesn’t seem to have lost a step in the intervening years, fortunately.  Burke and Hare is competently directed and extremely well-produced: the location shooting, costumes, sets, and plentiful extras illustrate how much care (and money) was invested in the picture.  

Some license was taken with history, of course.  The main characters (Burke, Hare, Knox, Monro, Hare’s wife) really existed and the film’s basic premise is relatively true to life (although the character of Burke’s girlfriend was eliminated, to allow for the development of his romance with Ginny), and even such touches as Burke and Hare’s previous employment digging the Union Canal are retained.  However, the murders have been sanitised (both the circumstance and the identity of the victims) to make the protagonists less objectionable, and while the conclusion is in some respects accurate (Burke was hung, Hare went free), the circumstances under which this occurs are reversed—again, to make both Burke and Hare less villainous than they were in real life.

This is significant, since Burke and Hare is a comedy and even black comedies have boundaries of taste beyond which they cannot trespass. Think of Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers (to use two Ealing examples), Eating Raoul, Monsieur Verdoux, Arsenic and Old Lace—all comedies with sympathetic murderers (or would-be murderers).  At the end of Burke and Hare, the hangman breaks the fourth wall and tells the audience Burke may have done a noble deed—he confessed to the crimes “out of love”—but that Burke and Hare did, after all, murder 16 people just for money.  The implication is that we should not like these characters too much, despite their charm and humour, and that we’ve been manipulated by the filmmakers into empathising with two ruthless murderers.

One running joke throughout the film is the “invention” of various terms by the characters.  In addition to the term “burking”—to smother a victim—which was historically-accurate (but in the movie is coined by Hare), Dr. Knox dubs the images created by his French aide “photographs,” and Hare comes up with the idea for “funeral parlours.”  There is also a subtle bit featuring a dog sitting on a grave in the Greyfriars cemetary (cf, “Greyfriars Bobby,” a famous dog who spent years on his master’s grave)—this was an anachronism, since the events of Burke and Hare preceded Bobby’s vigil by several decades, but it’s an amusing in-joke (it’s possibly also an homage to The Body Snatcher, a 1945 film also based on the Burke and Hare case, which also includes an appearance by “Greyfriar’s Bobby”).

I found Burke and Hare quite satisfactory: it’s visually splendid, well-acted and witty in the “typical” UK manner.  Then again, I’m kindly disposed towards British cinema in general, so perhaps I’m not a completely unbiased judge.  Objectively, I doubt this will make much of a splash in the USA, and that’s a shame.