From their inspired horror spoof “Shaun of the Dead,” to their enjoyable action movie send-up “Hot Fuzz,” to their new cute and clever alien road movie “Paul,” Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have proven there is no genre outside their range or comedic abilities.Pegg and Frost play two British sci-fi nerds who make a Winnebago pilgrimage from Comic-Con in San Diego to the famed Area 51. There they encounter Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), an alien who has escaped his government captors and is trying to make it back to his mothership. Thus begins a road trip across the American West, during which they will accidentally kidnap a young woman, be hunted by federal agents and one very irate father, and maybe, if they are very lucky, learn some very important lessons before sending E.T. home.“Paul” is several things I was not expecting, including sweet. Perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised me. Director Greg Mottola managed to take the crude teen comedy “Superbad” and infuse it with a precious sense of teenage longing and the sort of deeply abiding friendship that begins in childhood but lasts a lifetime. Working off of a script by his two leads (who deserve the lion’s share of this credit), Mottola does the same here, injecting tons of heart into a movie that could have been merely a cavalcade of tired nerd jokes.Our surprisingly fully formed characters genuinely learn about one another in ways that are significant to their development. In many ways, Paul the alien is far more human than the homo sapiens with whom he travels. The men, especially Frost, have spent a lifetime yearning to make first contact, but don’t know how to behave once it happens. There is also an element involving the love/hate relationship between religion and science that may rub some viewers the wrong way due to its tendency to go after low-hanging fruit.“Paul” is also quite dramatic, transforming from a road movie into a chase film full of bullets and explosions. Furthermore, the film is permeated with several moments of genuine awe and elation, moments that allow us to see the Earth from an extraterrestrial vantage point and our greater part in the cosmic waltz.If all this makes it sound as if “Paul” isn’t funny, think again. “Paul” is laugh-out-loud funny, especially if you count yourself among those vaulted souls who speak science fiction. The in-jokes and sci-fi winks are everywhere, from brief musical interludes to a delightful Steven Spielberg cameo. Pegg and Frost have a marvelous comic shorthand. Their very real friendship is more than a blip on the cinematic radar, something more akin to a contemporary Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello. Their give and take fits surprisingly well with Rogen’s antics.In one of the film’s last lines, someone asks, “That was good, wasn’t it?”Yes. Yes, it was.

Kristen Wiig, from left, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Blythe Danner in a scene from “Paul.” Photo by UNIVERSAL STUDIOS