Killzone 3 review: looks expensive, feels cheap

This has been a pretty pivotal console generation for first-person shooters. Developers like Infinity Ward, Bungie and DICE have dragged the genre away from its PC roots, tailoring controls for thumbs rather than mouse and keyboard fingers. In the process, shooters have become one of the most recognisable faces of gaming (as we're reminded every time an isolated psychopath decides to turn his high school into a shooting gallery), with the triple-A development costs, and expected profits, skyrocketing.

As a result, the FPS arena has become one dominated by a few platinum-gilded blockbuster franchises (Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield, Half-Life) and clogged by the chaff of many more that couldn't make back their huge costs and died on the vine. The Killzone franchise, developed by Guerrilla Games and exclusive to the Playstation 3, has probably done well enough to step up to the big boys' table in gaming Valhalla, but for many has never quite lived up to expectations.

Killzone 3 represents Guerrilla's latest attempt to firmly mark out its own spot in the FPS big leagues. The story of a war between the earth-based ISA forces and a horde of militant offworld exiles called the Helghast has reached a head by the third game, with the ISA beating a retreat from an aborted invasion of the Helghast homeworld, leaving the player (Sgt. "Sev" Sevchenko) and a few stragglers marooned on a hostile planet trying to work out how to escape.

Killzone 3 certainly has compelling core mechanics, with the chug of the weaponry feeling satisfying and industrial, and the controls slightly tuned-up after the intentionally sluggish movements of the second game (although, in this day and age, it still feels strange to look down iron sights by clicking the right stick). Enemies are suitably engaging to fight, diving behind cover and reacting to the player's movements to maintain a dynamism that's essential in the modern shooter. So far, so triple-A.

It's almost everything outside of the core combat that falls flat with Killzone 3. The visuals are impressive and speak to the immense amount of time and money that was undoubtedly spent on providing an appropriately high-res (and 3-D if you can afford it, which you can't) experience. But the art behind all the textures and lighting is as dull and featurelessly industrial as a never-ending chamber filled with spanners.

Much was made of the new jungle and snow environments, but the overriding visual tone here is still one of bleak austerity and axle grease, an issue from which Guerrilla now can't escape as they've woven it into the canon of the game. Level design remains the same linear experience as the last games, in that it takes pains to constrict player movement through trenches and corridors rather than find a way to direct gamers while giving the illusion of freedom (Guerrilla could take a few Bungie masterclasses in this regard).

Far more troubling, however, are the downright amateurish elements of the game, from both a technical and a game direction standpoint. The sound design, while mostly excellent when it comes to the beefy clatter of the weapons, regularly suffers in other areas. Cut-scenes occasionally lose their impact because something that should be deafening is bafflingly quiet. The ambient chatter of your regular squad-mate Rico is constantly cut off before the end of sentences.

Game direction is a hugely important part of development, especially in FPS titles that should thrive on total immersion. Here it seems to have been virtually ignored, with plot points and basic rivets in the gameplay seemingly abandoned entirely. I'll give a couple of examples, without spoiling anything (although I'm probably doing a fair job of spoiling this game for you anyway).

After a daring rescue attempt and escape from a snow-capped Helghast fortress, Sev and Rico need to figure out a way of getting away. The game then simply cuts to giving the player control of the two of them speeding away on Helghast vehicles, with no connective tissue provided in between. I don't know if a cutscene was skipped because of a glitch or if time or money constraints forced a scene to be dropped, but it was a jarring moment that entirely broke the game's already faltering spell.

In another instance, a crane that's essential to player progress fails to work, giving the Helghast a chance to attack Sev and Rico from below. After the Helghast attack is held off, it magically fixes itself with no explanation. Don't worry reader, you haven't woken up in 2001. This is just a modern game with moments of 2001 game design. All these issues seem to point to the fact that, despite its blockbuster budget, elements of the game feel rushed and incomplete, propped up so they're just about playable and shoved onto store shelves.

The story also feels like a blast from the past, and a small step backwards from even Killzone 2, not a game revered for its narrative. The protagonist is a painfully dull, transparent cypher. Rico is an irritating military rebel pastiche whose bickering with higher-up Narville (himself a borderline parody of the good commander held back by his own rigidity) quickly descends into broken-record territory. There's a hot chick, because hey, games need hot chicks. Shame they forget to turn her into an actual character.

The premise of a stranded platoon of soldiers trying to co-ordinate a fighting retreat provides a great opportunity to force players onto the back foot with a battle that revolves around survival rather than victory. I envisaged the daring raids, supply line attacks and covert assassinations that would surely come with this kind of mismatched conflict. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear that this is a familiar brand of Killzone action (complete with a grand plot to foil and cackling villains), during which you'll feel no more under threat than in the previous games in the series.

Of course, Guerrilla have also crafted some impressive set-pieces, with walking war buildings to destroy, mechs and space ships to pilot and jet packs to get introduced to and barely use again. But for all the game's amazing polygon count, it seems emblematic of everything that's wrong with blockbuster game development when it turns sour. Big bangs, big bucks and a gaping hole in the middle where the personality should be.

This is a single-player review only. Will update if the multiplayer is worth an update.

Smells like team spirit: music's best collaborators

The rock star is the bloated corpse of another musical reality, one where musicians were revered as unto gods, where tales of drug use and casual chauvinism cast their decadent shadow and dimmed the glow of the songs. Yes, the rock star is dead; let us throw rocks at his withered carcass and laugh at ourselves for ever falling in thrall to these idols of pomp and circumstance.

Long live the humble musician. Long live teamwork and creative friendship. Long live fucking and making music babies. Long live music where the concept is the thing, rather than the dude in the skinny jeans who made it. Most of all, long live laying it on really thick for a couple of paragraphs for no real reason at all.

In other words, we should be celebrating the gradual diminishment of the almighty ego from popular music (or at least our kowtowing to such ego). Some amazing music has come to us through unexpected collaborations or musical projects where an artist's cultivated identity has been laid aside. Here are some specialists of double-teaming ideas to create delicious sonic spit-roasts.

Mike Patton (Faith No More; Tomahawk; Fantomas; Mr. Bungle; countless others)

The god-king of restless spirits, Mike Patton might be most famous for lending his elasto-spastic vocal chords to Faith No More after the departure of Chuck Mosely. Patton's performances on FNM albums stretched miraculously from angelic warbling to hacking up chunks of atavistic deathscreech. It's this versatility and enthusiasm for the new that has propelled the post-FNM Patton, skipping spryly from singing Italian pop songs with a 40-piece orchestra (his solo album Mondo Cane) to evoking the horror of surgery without anaesthetic on Delirium Cordia, a concept album with Fantomas, the band Patton presides over with members of Slayer, The Melvins and his first band Mr. Bungle.

If there's one thing that unites Patton's scattershot approach to recording, it's a fascination with the extreme and the absurd. From Tomahawk's self-titled debut album, on which he deliriously inhabits a frothing, Leatherface-esque backwoods madman, to the name of the label he somehow found time to establish (Ipecac), Patton is clearly a first-class fantasist obsessed with the bizarre intersection of humour and nightmare. The amazing thing is that across all his varied releases, the slimy, dribbling dimensions that he creates are consistently as enticing as they are repulsive.

Click here for my retrospective review of Tomahawk, possibly my favourite Patton-led album, on the MOJO website. It even made my top 10 albums of the 21st century.

Danger Mouse (Solo; Gnarls Barkley; Danger Doom; Dark Night of the Soul; Broken Bells)

This might be a bit of a cheat, given that Danger Mouse is a producer as well as an artist. After all, a producer who doesn't collaborate with artists is just a guy sitting on a park bench trying to conduct the pigeons. But Brian Burton is more than just a producer; he's an engine room of ideas, a project leader who clearly thrives on matching collaborators with exactly the right material and bending expectations of genre (most obviously with his Grey Album in 2004, which mixed samples from the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album to startling effect).

Outside of his production work, Danger Mouse has presided over a host of great, original projects. Dark Night of the Soul, a collaborative record he curated with Sparklehorse's now sadly departed Mark Linkous with visual accompaniments (and two songs) from legendary surrealist David Lynch. Despite other contributions ranging from Wayne Coyne to Black Francis to Suzanne Vega and beyond, the album felt united under an umbrella of existential angst and spiritual doubt (and a none-more biblical title). He also knows when to stand back and let other personalities shine - Dark Night bears Linkous' fingerprints all over it, which is appropriate both because doubt was much more his territory and because the album ended up as his epitaph.

Even on the projects that go tits up, Danger Mouse tends to find a way to salvage the situation. Though his inspired idea to team minimalist blues-rock duo The Black Keys and Ike Turner may have been disrupted by Turner's inconsiderately timed death, the material was used to create the Keys' funkiest and most spirited album to date (Attack and Release, 2008). Exquisite judgement, good people skills and the ability to operate behind the scenes and out of the spotlight makes Danger Mouse the music world's ultimate project manager.

Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees; Queens of the Stone Age; Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan; The Gutter Twins)

Mark Lanegan might be the ultimate collaborator, as he seems to make his best music when he partners up. With his cement-mixer voice and a jaw so set that it appears to have spent the last 40 years chewing on asbestos, Lanegan might appear the epitome of the lone wolf, but he has spent much of his career as a wandering muse. As a man who looks and talks like he's stepped out of a detective novel, he's not been short of dance partners.

With three excellent albums under their belt, his perfectly mismatched partnership with Isobel Campbell (small and sweet and used to play in Belle & Sebastian) has certainly borne fruit, his bleeding baritone mixing with her wispy croon to create a spectral interplay that's reminiscent of pulpy folk tales and old ghost stories. He's also contributed lead vocals to some of Queens of the Stone Age's most memorable tracks ('Hanging Tree', 'In The Fade') and teamed up with pal from the old grunge days Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs) to create the gloriously scuzzy and curiously eerie rock opus Saturnalia as The Gutter Twins (not to mention his recurring appearances with Dulli's Twilight Singers). Lanegan might have been at grunge's ground zero in the early 90s (check out his collaboration with Kurt Cobain), but he was never trapped by it. He wandered onwards and upwards, seeking inspiration and the ability to inspire.

The Lonely Island

The Lonely Island make stupid music. Glorious, ridiculous, stupid music. Conceived by Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer as a comedy sketch group, The Lonely Island began to focus more on musical shorts after the phenomenal success of the songs like the mercurial 'Lazy Sunday' and the elegant 'Dick In A Box' on Saturday Night Live. Now there's a hit album, Incredibad, with follow-up The Dudes on the way.

The popularity of Samberg and his hombres can be partly chalked up to the fact that although the songs are hip hop parodies, there's a genuine love of the genre in evidence that boosts their credibility as catchy, well-written tracks as well as effective comedy vehicles. The insane collaborations probably helped, too. Using SNL as the perfect celebrity contact book, The Lonely Island gleefully manipulate their guests' public personas to give the jokes a pleasing meta quality, or just to shock the fuck out of anybody listening. You haven't quite lived until you've heard Natalie Portman threaten to sit on your face and take a shit ('Natalie's Rap'), witnessed Julian Casablancas deliver the deadpan line "I saw a Spanish guy doing the Bartman" ('Boombox'), or watched a music video that features Akon launching fireworks from his dick ('I Just Had Sex'). With the aforementioned Akon team-up and a deliciously grotesque collaboration with Nicki Minaj ('The Creep'), signs suggest that the joke-well hasn't run dry just yet and The Lonely Island will continue to reign supreme in the admittedly underpopulated kingdom of Good-Natured Hip Hop Spoofdom.

Comedy review: Aziz Ansari

Aziz Ansari may be the latest breakout comedy star in the US, having been officially enshrined in American pop culture by hosting the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, but he's still relatively anonymous in the UK. He's most recognisable from small roles in recent Apatow-sponsored comedy movies like Funny People and Get Him to the Greek, as well as a memorable one episode appearance on Flight of the Conchords as a racist fruit vendor ("Great speech; too bad New Zealanders are a bunch of cocky A-holes descended from criminals and retarded monkeys"). His most meaty roles, on US sitcom Parks & Recreation and as co-creator of MTV sketch show Human Giant (with Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer) are still niche viewing in the UK, blighted by British broadcasters' bizarre hesitance to purchase or effectively schedule American comedy shows.

Still, Ansari's UK anonymity was gleefully and ruthlessly exploited by the crowd that gathered to see his stand-up set within the confines of the Soho Theatre on Saturday night. After all, seeing Ansari in such a small room (with the stage set of a recent play hastily covered over in the style of a Dexter kill room, no less) is probably an increasingly rare prospect in LA or New York.

Support act Dan Levy is an effective introduction to the slick comedy patter of which Ansari is a master. In his short set, Levy breathlessly covers getting obsessed with random extras in pornos, tripping balls on magic cookies and encountering vengeful Twilight fans with nary a misplaced syllable. It's funny stuff, and one of the rare stand-up instances where I might have appreciated another five minutes of a support act rather than readying a pre-prepared bag of staplers to throw at their head if they stray beyond the 10 minute mark.

But within two minutes of Aziz Ansari taking the stage, we're reminded why it's him we came to see. In some ways, it's hard to define Ansari's appeal to someone unfamiliar with his style. There are other stand-ups who have smarter, better material. There are other stand-ups who are more innovative and unpredictable in their performances. But no one delivers a gag better than Aziz Ansari. The South Carolina native is a massive hip hop fan, and his ability to zip through jokes at a pace that threatens to break the sound barrier while maintaining nuance and clarity would make any rapper proud.

A recent Independent review of Ansari's London show described his tone as "mildly pissed off". With respect, that's bollocks. What's so refreshing about Ansari is his refusal to lunge for the easy laughs with the kind of faux-embittered vitriol that's so common in modern comedy. His set is peppered with a wide-eyed bewilderment that keeps the tone firmly whimsical, even when he's describing shooting a pair of puppies in the face to teach their owners a lesson about respecting one's elders. The jokes centre around his lack of success with women ("I'm gonna hang out with Brian; he's never mean to me"), his abiding love of meaty snacks ("It's scientifically proven that a quesadilla at 3am is 'delicious'. That research was done by me, last night") and the magical insanity of rap stars (one stand-out anecdote sees 50 Cent stubbornly refusing to get the difference between grapes and grapefruit), for the most part delivered with a pep that suggests Ansari is amused by the weirdness of life rather than infuriated by it.

You'd have thought the son of an Indian immigrant raised in the American South would have a preoccupation with race relations, but Ansari bears no grudges here. When he does focus on racism he's more absorbed in the inane details, like how almost any phrase can be interpreted as racist if it's delivered aggressively enough (a risky joke, Ansari explains, because it requires a non-white person to be in the front row at every show) or the sheer randomness of obscure racial slurs ("touched with the tar brush" comes to mind, especially as it apparently applies to me).

There are some nice, personal touches scattered here and there, like the moment at the very beginning of the set when Ansari positions himself in contrived stand-up poses to give the audience a photo op before the show starts, or when he shoehorns a Marks & Spencer reference into a gag before launching into a tirade about how tired that technique is.

For the encore, Ansari does an impromptu Q&A and wheels out Raaaaaaaandy (with eight A's) for us one more time. But he acknowledges that the character has passed his sell-by date. Randy was a moment in time, a stand-up so epically inane that he came full circle back to making us laugh our dicks off. Randy's still a part of Ansari's set to a degree - we get a peek of him in the occasional drawn out syllable or exaggerated movement - but with Aziz the man, we get so much more.

(Picture courtesy of Jakob Lodwick)

IN DEFENCE OF: Peter Molyneux, the man of many promises

A few days ago it was announced that Peter Molyneux, formerly of Bullfrog Productions and now head of Lionhead Studios and creative director of Microsoft Game Studios Europe, the creator of games like Populous, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper and most recently the Fable series, is being honoured with a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Fellowship, placing him in the esteemed company of the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Stanley Kubrik and Christopher Lee. It's a continuation of the pleasing trend for influential videogame designers being recognised by the mainstream entertainment industry (Molyneux joins Mario's main man Shigeru Miyamoto and sim superstar Will Wright, who have already been inducted).

But the gaming community isn't as thrilled as one might expect at this latest evidence of game design being ushered into the limelight. That's because, if the internet is to be believed, Peter Molyneux is A Bad Man. If you check out the comments pages on many of the news sites running the story, you'll see quite a few comments like this one from The Telegraph: "If there is an award for failing to deliver then Peter Molyneux should certainly get it." Type Molyneux's name into Google and two suggestions that automatically spring up are "Peter Molyneux lies" and "Peter Molyneux is a liar".

What is it about Molyneux that has gamers so riled? Well, he's an overenthusiastic public speaker with a tendency to make grand proclamations about his games that aren't quite delivered in the finished product. The infamous quote that is often rubbed in his face like a facial scrub of shame is his idea that in Fable, his most recent series (a fantasy role-playing game that emphasises player choice and morality), a player could plant an acorn at the beginning of the game, which would grow to an oak tree as the story progressed, or words to that effect. It has now become assumed knowledge by hardcore gamers that Molyneux is at best a chronic promise-breaker and at worst a PR droid who boosts his game sales with cynical campaigns to build unwarranted hype.

So is Peter Molyneux a liar? Should his BAFTA Fellowship be revoked on the grounds of slithering cynicism and masochistic mendaciousness? Well, no. Molyneux has indeed developed a recent habit for getting excited at press conferences and making statements that probably make his Lionhead developers wince. But this isn't lying or up-selling a poor product.

With the exception of his latest game Fable III, which was a genuine disappointment, Molyneux and his teams have a brilliant record of creating games that positively buzz with innovative gameplay, novel concepts, charming presentation and genuinely British sensibilities and humour. He has done more than anyone to make British game development what it is today. Not through brash talk, but through his games. They're not always flawless, but they've been consistently imaginative, eccentric and forward-thinking from the early days of Populous and Syndicate through to Fable II in 2008. Even Fable III was bursting with ideas, even if most of them were the wrong ones.

It's pretty demoralising to see a game creator as passionate and idealistic as Molyneux being pulled down for the very ambition that makes his games great. The man shoots for the stars on every project. Even if he never quite gets there, his games reach heights that 90% of humdrum military shooters and annualised sports games never even bother to try for. Dungeon Keeper, my favourite of Molyneux's games, crams more wit, character and addictive gameplay into one level than a hundred more polished games that are cranked out via committee and compromise.

And if we're now criticising developers for promising too much, what of the other BAFTA honorees from the gaming world? What happened to Will Wright's Spore, which was due to join us all together in an infinite God simulation, with our evolving races interacting with one another? Miyamoto's Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had problems with its "revolutionary" Wii controls that put it below the best of the series and disappointed many fans in the long run. But although many of the grandest ideas don't have a hope of perfect execution (at least the first time out), the games industry, which tends to avoid risk and stick to proven concepts, desperately needs these people and their teams for their willingness to stick their necks out and shoot for glory.

I'm not saying don't call Peter Molyneux out when he makes a game that is not up to par. And feel free to take his excited press conference chat with a grain of salt. But let's recognise the role of gaming's innovators, the people who pave the way for other less courageous souls to iterate on. We need to be careful what we're wishing for when criticising the people who emphasise progress over slick layers of polish. If we keep dragging them down, we'll be the ones to blame for turning a great industry into a conveyor belt.

The King of Limbs review

This is a blog that purports to be about, among other things, music. According to the unspoken contract I apparently signed upon becoming a contributor to the internet, I am obliged to write something about any new album that Radiohead brings out, especially if they bring it out in some revolutionary, web 2.0 kind of way.

So here are some thoughts, which I will try to keep as succinct as possible, as I'm not sure how much thinking time this planet has left to dedicate to Radiohead. I don't want to be the thought-straw that broke the camel's meta-back, after all.

I should preface this with the fact that I never signed up to the Radiohead Guild of Obsessives. I like the band; their music yields some jaw-dropping moments (the breakdown in 'Sit Down. Stand Up' on Hail To The Thief and 'Pyramid Song' on Amnesiac immediately spring to mind). I stand firmly against the naysayers who claim that everything the band released after OK Computer is navel-gazing nonsense, but neither do I subscribe to the notion that Radiohead get critical immunity on the grounds that they are automatically "interesting". In other words, Radiohead is a band I follow, but not unquestioningly (never that).

The King of Limbs is certainly a bold statement in minimalism. The first five tracks feel like variations on a theme - long, looping melodies composed of guitar, samples and Thom Yorke's sinuous voice, accompanied by fast, soft beats to nail down the mood (Phil Selway's percussion is subtle and nuanced as always, confirming his place as Radiohead's unsung genius). Opening track 'Bloom' follows its name in structure, starting slowly and adding elements in a gradual unfurling, culminating in the introduction of distant brass. The following four tracks work on this template and softly toy with it; 'Morning Mr. Magpie' has a more aggressive tone, muted guitars quietly insistent as Yorke calls out a parasite ("Now you stole it, all the magic/ And took my memory"), while on 'Little By Little' the drums have an almost Madchester, 'Fools Gold' quality that marries well with the song's atonal guitar lines and dusty vibe.

After 'Lotus Flower', the album opens up and allows itself some room to manoeuvre around those all-eclipsing beats. 'Codex' is a gorgeous, bittersweet piece in the vein of 'Pyramid Song', lilting piano playing off what sounds like distant whale calls. It's an escape song, revelling in the isolated beauty of a safe underwater space, illuminated by dragonflies. A horn section slowly begins to puncture the song as it approaches its climax, with a repeated line that speaks as much to past pain as contentment in the here and now ("The water's clear/ And innocent"). 'Give Up The Ghost' is the only song that hints at something new for the band, mixing a little organic strumming and guitar thumping in with the trademark distorted backing vocals, while 'Separator' brings back those clockwork drums for another lonesome trip, complete with psychedelic imagery and surprisingly idyllic guitar twiddling and synths as the dream progresses.

The King of Limbs won't be winning Radiohead many new devotees, and is likely dividing opinions even in their own dedicated fanbase. It's a little too comfortable, too safe, to fully win over those who want the band to be eating boundaries for breakfast, and the old-school brigade will be sighing once more at the lack of assertive guitars and acerbic choruses. But while no single track (with the exception of 'Codex') stands out on its own, this album sees Radiohead committing to a single, alluring world. It lacks the vibrancy and punch of In Rainbows and will probably end up seen as a minor entry into the band's discography. But that's okay, because The King of Limbs isn't an album to enjoy with friends. It's a record to to embrace in dark corners with headphones and high volumes, an untrustworthy dance partner that might waltz the night away with you then suddenly insist on a suicide pact.

Paul review: missing Mr Wright?

We all know Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are fanboy royalty, especially here in the UK, where the duo could probably film themselves strangling nuns and get a standing ovation, as long as they were dressed up as wookies while they did it. There's a sense of trust when we see these two onscreen together that's almost unique in the hyper-critical vulture's nest that is the online fan community. That's what Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz buys you in nerd currency.

But Paul, the road movie/Close Encounters homage Pegg and Frost wrote together and roped in Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) to direct, marks a momentous watershed for the pair, it being the first film they've appeared in together without the guiding hand of co-conspirator Edgar Wright behind the camera. After all, their records outside of their Wright collaborations are considerably more spotty - Pegg has been earning his bread with amusing but lightweight rom coms (Run Fatboy Run) and "funny little Brit" comic relief roles in massive US blockbusters (Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek). Frost, meanwhile, has mixed some TV roles with the likes of The Boat that Rocked, Kinky Boots and Wild Child, which range from unremarkable to somewhat dreadful.

So here's a story Pegg and Frost have been working on since filming on Shaun of the Dead, a passion project that they're properly invested in, which aims to stake their claim as great screenwriters and comic actors in their own right. They certainly made smart decisions in the lead-up to the film, working with a director with proven comedy chops and bringing on board a veritable troop of credible US comic talent (Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Joe Lo Truglio and Bill Hader, among others). So did they bring it together, or does Paul feel worse off for its Wright-shaped hole?

Well, as Daisy Steiner would say, it's ups and downs. This story, which follows a couple of British geeks who have their sci-fi obsessed US road trip interrupted by the appearance of the titular foul-mouthed little space man who needs to catch his flying saucer home before the M.I.Bs on his tail harvest his magical gizzards, has plenty going for it, but some crucial missteps hold it back from the upper echelons of the action-comedy pantheon.

Let's start with the bad. Perhaps the most surprising thing that occurred to me watching Paul, a criticism I never thought I'd make of a Pegg/Frost movie, was the relative lack of chemistry between the two leads. The script makes a big deal of Graeme (Pegg) and Clive's (Frost) lifelong friendship and the constant assumptions by passersby that they're lovers, but oddly enough, Pegg and Frost lack the amiable onscreen fizz that is so central to all their other collaborations. Their banter at the beginning of the film seems forced and dull (along the lines of "Who'd have thought we'd be here at Comic-Con/this UFO hotspot, eh? Amazing!") and the relationship lacks the little details of familiarity that sell an onscreen friendship to an audience. The fault lies less with Pegg and Frost's performances and more with the script, which fails to differentiate the characters enough to generate some engaging back-and-forth.

Sadly, Paul also lacks the gag hit-rate to really register as an unreserved slice of fried gold. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of really funny moments (on which more later), but few of them are in the saggy first half hour when Graeme and Clive are touring around in their RV. A comedy really needs to hit the ground running to warm up an audience's funny bone for the meat of the movie, and in this regard Paul falls short.

There are also some pretty lazy, easy-target jokes, most notably an ongoing seam of perfectly truthful but painfully cliche anti-Creationism gags. Speaking of ongoing gags, Pegg and Frost somewhat overplay their hand with the movie references - a little goes a long way when it comes to sly nods to other movies, and there are moments (our introduction to Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil chief among them) when what should be a wink feels more like a oversized cock punch.

So there's the bad, but what about the good? Well, there's plenty to choose from here, as well. Alien stow-away Paul is the heart of the movie, as well as the adrenaline shot that kickstarts the plot just when it seems to be flatlining. Voiced by Seth Rogen, Paul is a brilliant creation. Hilarious, sweet and expertly rendered, Paul is an extraterrestrial with a difference. He's been cooped up in government facilities since his ship crashed in the 50s, and his exposure to earthling media has made him a foul-mouthed product of pop culture (in a clever little twist, he's also been the secret consultant behind xeno-inspired artistic endeavours over the years, from Close Encounters to The X-Files). Rogen is an unlikely but surprisingly inspired vocal choice, imbuing Paul with a soft human side as well as the expected sense of comic timing.

Backing Paul and his Limey cohorts up is a dynamic and well-considered cast of supporting players. Kristen Wiig is foremost among them, playing sheltered Christian fundamentalist Ruth, who has her entire theological belief system blown apart the minute she catches sight of Paul's fat grey head. Her overenthusiastic attempts to embrace the sinner's lifestyle, complete with jarring mish-mash swearwords and hyperactive drug freakouts, yield some of the film's funniest moments.

Bill Hader, Joe Lo Truglio and Jason Bateman all shine as the trio of goons on Paul's trail. Hader and Lo Truglio suffuse their bumbling over-zealous rookie roles with a child-like stupidity (Lo Truglio's character at one point loses his shit over the thought of Paul's "space man balls", which in turn sets up a cracking visual gag down the line) that does a lot to bring the movie's hit-rate back up to par. Bateman as the aforementioned Zoil indulges his inner bad-ass, delivering his lines with a straight-faced conviction that counterplays well with his ridiculous subordinates.

Although Paul might lack a little of that consistent comedic flair to put it up there with the greats in terms of comedy, praise should be given to Pegg and Frost, and director Mottola, for creating a genuinely feel-good story with real warmth. Pegg has described Paul as a love letter to Steven Spielberg, and there really is a pleasantly Spielbergian tone here. The story's impetus picks right up as the movie hits the mid-way point, with Pegg and Frost showing they have a real knack for mixing broad humour with more touching moments, especially as the gang get closer to the end-point of their journey.

No doubt Paul would have been a different movie had Edgar Wright been at the helm. But it feels unfair to speculate what Wright could have brought to the table when Frost, Pegg and Mottola have crafted a movie with an atmosphere of its own. Paul is not without its flaws, but as a broad, accessible comedy blockbuster, it's pretty loveable. In its own way.

Review: Drive-By Truckers - Go-Go Boots

Here's my review of the new Drive-By Truckers album Go-Go Boots, which went live on the BBC Music website. To see the review on the BBC's site, click here.

BBC Review - Drive-By Truckers, Go-Go Boots

The prolific Truckers hit yet another career peak.

Chris Lo

Georgia-based rockers Drive-By Truckers have to be one of the most prolific bands working today; ninth LP Go-Go Boots comes less than a year after its predecessor The Big To-Do. The songs for both albums were recorded during the same sessions, with the more strident rock 'n' roll tracks released first. Go-Go Boots is no haphazard collection of leftovers, though. It's a well-crafted set of weatherworn country, soul and Southern blues that makes up for its lack of stomping riffs with raw emotion and a more diverse sonic palate, particularly indebted to the Muscle Shoals country-soul sound that the band grew up with.

While The Big To-Do felt a little patchy between its big numbers, Go-Go Boots is rock-solid throughout. The mix of different styles, all filtered through the lenses of lead songwriters and vocalists Patterson Hood, Shonna Tucker and Mike Cooley, effortlessly sustains the album through its 14 tracks and 66-minute run-time. The Truckers have always been evocative small-town storytellers, and these tracks are no different. 'Used To Be A Cop' sees Hood inhabit the ragged old bones of a tired ex-cop riding a mean streak of bad luck, accompanied by a funk-inflected bassline and resigned slide guitar. Tucker's voice evokes the tear-stained cheeks and bleary panic of faithful girlfriend searching about town for her missing lover on Eddie Hinton cover 'Where's Eddie'. Cooley ekes every drop of yearning from the simple line "I think about you when I can / And even sometimes when I can't, I do," on banjo-pluckin' tearjerker 'Cartoon Gold'.

It's this Hood/Cooley/Tucker trifecta that makes Drive-By Truckers such a consistently fresh proposition. Apart from allowing the band to crank out records at the speed of sound, each of the three brings their own angle to the songs. Hood is the go-to guy for full-bodied, heart-on-sleeve rock; Cooley is the band's strongest connection to that stiff-backed, Willie Nelson-esque bare bones country music; and Shonna Tucker brings a sparkling voice and a much-needed female perspective to break up all the bruised masculinity on show. Go-Go Boots is one of the best examples yet of the separate yet complementary skills of the Truckers' three leaders, melding styles and switching moods but retaining an overall feel that's distinctly theirs.