Self
Drita D'Avanzo
Self
Mob Wives
7.9
2011
6 Seasons • 82 Episodes
Reality
Overview
Mob Wives is an American reality television series on VH1 that made its debut April 17, 2011. It follows six Staten Island women after their husbands or fathers are arrested and imprisoned for crimes connected to the Mafia.
Trailer
Mob Wives | Season 5 Teaser | VH1 Official
Cast
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Cynic in the Passenger Seat
There is a specific sort of road movie that exists not to get the characters from point A to point B, but to force them to reckon with the distance between their fantasies and reality. In 2011, when Greg Mottola released *Paul*, he wasn't just giving us a stoner comedy with a CGI alien; he was gently dismantling the very obsession that the film’s two protagonists—Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings—live and breathe. It is a meta-textual exercise, sure, but it wears its heart in a place that feels surprisingly unguarded for a film filled with pot jokes and expletives.
Mottola has always had a knack for capturing the prickly, often uncomfortable evolution of young men. After *Superbad* and *Adventureland*, he brought that same observational eye to this project, treating the Comic-Con fanaticism of his leads not as a punchline, but as a genuine state of being. When we meet Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), they are so deeply ensconced in the lore of science fiction that they have effectively insulated themselves from actual life. They have flown from England to traverse the American Southwest, tracking UFO sites with the dedication of holy pilgrims.
The genius of the film, however, lies in the titular character. Paul is not the glowing, benevolent diplomat of Spielberg’s imagination. He is a short, grey, sarcastic shut-in who has been chain-smoking and influencing American pop culture for decades while rotting in a government bunker. Seth Rogen’s voice work is essential here—he does not play the "alien"; he plays a guy you might know from the neighborhood, just one with a larger cranium and better access to government secrets. He is weary, cynical, and desperate to get home, which forces our two fanboys to stop staring at the sky and start dealing with the person actually sitting in their van.
There is a moment—and I find myself thinking about it often—where Paul reveals the truth of his existence to Ruth (Kristen Wiig), a young, devoutly religious woman the group encounters at an RV park. Ruth’s entire worldview is built on a rigid, literal interpretation of her faith. When she sees Paul, she does not just panic; she undergoes a violent, hilarious, and ultimately tender existential crisis. It is the scene that elevates the movie from a standard road-trip romp to something almost philosophical.
Look at how Wiig plays it. She is not just screaming; she is oscillating between terror and the frantic need to categorize what she is seeing. The film suggests that perhaps we are all just holding onto our own versions of a "truth" to keep the universe from feeling too large, too chaotic. As A.O. Scott noted in his review for *The New York Times*, the film is "less about extraterrestrial phenomena than it is about the nature of fanaticism." Whether that fanaticism is directed at a movie franchise or a holy text, the impulse to find meaning in the mystery is a deeply human trait.
The camaraderie between Pegg and Frost is the gravity that keeps this whole thing from drifting into space. They have been writing and performing together for so long that their dialogue feels less like a script and more like a shorthand they developed over a decade of pub conversations. They do not need to act out their friendship; it is simply there, in the way they look at each other when things go sideways, or the way they deflate when their expectations are met with the banal reality of a roadside diner.
I am not entirely sure the film’s constant referential winking at other sci-fi classics always works. Sometimes it plays like the movie is nudging you in the ribs, asking, "Did you catch that?" But then, maybe that is the point. It is a movie *for* the people who catalog the references. By the time they reach the climax, the film has somehow transformed from an homage into an argument for the present moment. Paul, the creature who has seen the future and the past, just wants to have a beer and exist in the now. And by the end, even if you are a little tired of the references, you find yourself wanting the same for them.
There is a specific sort of road movie that exists not to get the characters from point A to point B, but to force them to reckon with the distance between their fantasies and reality. In 2011, when Greg Mottola released *Paul*, he wasn't just giving us a stoner comedy with a CGI alien; he was gently dismantling the very obsession that the film’s two protagonists—Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings—live and breathe. It is a meta-textual exercise, sure, but it wears its heart in a place that feels surprisingly unguarded for a film filled with pot jokes and expletives.
Mottola has always had a knack for capturing the prickly, often uncomfortable evolution of young men. After *Superbad* and *Adventureland*, he brought that same observational eye to this project, treating the Comic-Con fanaticism of his leads not as a punchline, but as a genuine state of being. When we meet Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), they are so deeply ensconced in the lore of science fiction that they have effectively insulated themselves from actual life. They have flown from England to traverse the American Southwest, tracking UFO sites with the dedication of holy pilgrims.
The genius of the film, however, lies in the titular character. Paul is not the glowing, benevolent diplomat of Spielberg’s imagination. He is a short, grey, sarcastic shut-in who has been chain-smoking and influencing American pop culture for decades while rotting in a government bunker. Seth Rogen’s voice work is essential here—he does not play the "alien"; he plays a guy you might know from the neighborhood, just one with a larger cranium and better access to government secrets. He is weary, cynical, and desperate to get home, which forces our two fanboys to stop staring at the sky and start dealing with the person actually sitting in their van.
There is a moment—and I find myself thinking about it often—where Paul reveals the truth of his existence to Ruth (Kristen Wiig), a young, devoutly religious woman the group encounters at an RV park. Ruth’s entire worldview is built on a rigid, literal interpretation of her faith. When she sees Paul, she does not just panic; she undergoes a violent, hilarious, and ultimately tender existential crisis. It is the scene that elevates the movie from a standard road-trip romp to something almost philosophical.
Look at how Wiig plays it. She is not just screaming; she is oscillating between terror and the frantic need to categorize what she is seeing. The film suggests that perhaps we are all just holding onto our own versions of a "truth" to keep the universe from feeling too large, too chaotic. As A.O. Scott noted in his review for *The New York Times*, the film is "less about extraterrestrial phenomena than it is about the nature of fanaticism." Whether that fanaticism is directed at a movie franchise or a holy text, the impulse to find meaning in the mystery is a deeply human trait.
The camaraderie between Pegg and Frost is the gravity that keeps this whole thing from drifting into space. They have been writing and performing together for so long that their dialogue feels less like a script and more like a shorthand they developed over a decade of pub conversations. They do not need to act out their friendship; it is simply there, in the way they look at each other when things go sideways, or the way they deflate when their expectations are met with the banal reality of a roadside diner.
I am not entirely sure the film’s constant referential winking at other sci-fi classics always works. Sometimes it plays like the movie is nudging you in the ribs, asking, "Did you catch that?" But then, maybe that is the point. It is a movie *for* the people who catalog the references. By the time they reach the climax, the film has somehow transformed from an homage into an argument for the present moment. Paul, the creature who has seen the future and the past, just wants to have a beer and exist in the now. And by the end, even if you are a little tired of the references, you find yourself wanting the same for them.