In Eric Kohn‘s 3.13 N.Y. Times profile of Paul helmer Greg Mottola, the bespectacled, bald-headed director of Superbad and Adventureland, describes his latest as (a) “ridiculous” and (b) “silly but also smart” in a “high-low comedy” sense. And yet he’s “worried” about the latest Paul trailer portraying the alien “as an extraterrestrial frat boy.”


Never, ever funny. In fact, moments like this make me want to puke.

“Probably every puerile joke is in there,” Mottola tells Kohn. “They’re obviously in a different context in the movie because the character is irreverent. He doesn’t respect authority.”

So this “silly, ridiculous” movie has “puerile jokes” that Mottola included of his own (and the producers’ and the studio’s) free will, and Mottola is afraid that people will, like, get the wrong idea?

There’s one thing that can’t be said too many times. Supposedly comic moments when characters scream “aaaggghhh!” as a way of conveying panic and terror are never funny — not before, not now and definitely not tomorrow. They’re merely emphatic and repetitive. And yet mediocre comedies always seem to include them.