Paul

Directed by Greg Mottola. Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Sigourney Weaver, Blythe Danner, Bill Hader, Jeffrey Tambor, voice of Seth Rogan 15A cert, gen release, 103 min

JUST AS the 1967 Casino Royaleisn't a "proper" James Bond film, Paul isn't really a proper Simon Pegg film. You know what I mean. Though the writer and actor has originated only two features ( Shaun of the Deadand Hot Fuzz), a house style has already been established. Director Edgar Wright flings the camera round on a rubber bungee. A cast of thousands create an epic in some humble corner of England.

Soberly directed by Greg Mottola ( Superbad), the new piece is smaller, less manic, more American and not as good as its predecessors. Still, half-decent Pegg is preferable to most of the filth they shovel over us these days.

Making promiscuous allusions to ET, the film finds two English geeks (Pegg and regular sidekick Nick Frost) travelling to the US for the annual sci-fi jamboree that is Comic-Con. Driving away from the event, eager to seek out the site of supposed alien landings, they happen upon a strange grey creature with the voice of Seth Rogen. It transpires that the being is, indeed, from beyond the stars and for the past few decades has been influencing the way pop culture addresses extraterrestrial affairs. A rollicking road trip results.

Closer to an extended sketch than the scattershot satire we have come to expect, Paul makes good use of the cuddly chemistry between Frost and Pegg. There is something of a mid-evening BBC2 factual series about the enterprise. "Coming up after University Challenge, Two Men and an Alienfinds Simon, Nick and Paul touring the windier sections of Arizona," nobody says.

Ultimately, however, Paul's limited scope lets it down. In the latter stages, the film, cranking down its satirical impulses, lets slip a desire to actually become ET. The finale, fired by sentimentality, offers a restaging of that film's final scene that wouldn't seem out of place at the Universal Studio theme park.

Oh well. View it as a holding pattern before the next proper Simon Pegg film and you'll find the time passing pleasurably enough. DONALD CLARKE