Not apPAULling at all

Imagine going on a road trip through the backwaters of North American with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. Sounds pretty awesome, right? Throw in a crude alien with the voice Seth Rogen and you have the premise for Paul, a sci-fi comedy that is thankfully a lot more spectacular than its title.

Frost and Pegg play two British, Klingon-speaking comic-book geeks who fulfil their lifelong dream of going to San Diego Comic-Con and hiring a RV to visit the famous UFO hotspots in rural American. They bump into Paul, an extraterrestrial on the lam from a government agency trying to have him lobotomised. The trio become allies as they try to keep the weed-smoking, f-bomb dropping alien out of the clutches of government agents (Jason Bateman, Bill Hader) and The Big Guy (Sigourney Weaver).

Frost and Pegg are, quite frankly, comic geniuses and although this isn't as good as their previous efforts Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, which they also wrote and starred in, Paul is still a lot of fun. The first genuinely funny comedy of the year, it's full of unexpected gags, original punch lines and a pitch-perfect cast, namely Hader and Bateman as Men In Black-esque agents, but also Kristen Wiig as Pegg's love interest and Glee's Jane Lynch in a painfully small cameo.

Being a sci-fi comedy from the creators of cult TV series Spaced, you expect there to be plenty of genre references. Yet Pegg and Frost take the pop-culture winks to another level, referencing everything from Aliens and Close Encounters, to Titanic and Jaws. Director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) proves he can be funny outside of hormone-fuelled teenagers, leading Frost and Pegg in light-hearted, laugh-out-loud road trip romp.

Paul opens tomorrow.