What starts as a coming of middle-age movie becomes an apocalyptic plot of alien invasion, and appropriately, the first specimens of this inhuman life form are revealed in the form of teenagers because get off my lawn!

Do you have the next Small Press Expo marked on your calendar? Do you have Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men volumes, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the collected works of Douglas Coupland all placed on your top bookshelf, filed under “A” for “Awesome”? Do you have an original, operational Nintendo Entertainment System currently hooked up to your TV? Have you watched Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the entire run of Spaced within the past year?

Conventional wisdom, for many years, went that American audiences and British humour just didn’t mix. Apart from legions of cultish fans who could quote Python chapter and verse, and PBS viewers glued to re-runs of Upstairs, Downstairs and Fawlty Towers, most American audiences seemed either to not get it, or just not care. But the recent pond-crossing successes of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais suggests that maybe tastes are changing on this side of…