What Planet Are You From?

source: What Planet Are You From?

Lets see: good cast and interesting basic idea "Are men really from another planet when they treat women like that!" This could be funny. But no, this is failure. I don't understand men who say this is hilarious. Maybe they are laughing at themselves? Maybe some teenage boys think it is funny if a man says to woman he doesn't know "May I insert my * into you?" It could be funny in a movie, but not in the real world. Maybe some men really are from another planet? Just another failed project from a comedian who wants to be movie star. He is no Eddie Murphy and he knows it. One of those movies you lose nothing is don't see it. BORING. NOT FUNNY.

This movie would have to be one of the biggest decrescendos of all time. From the start its incredibly funny, but as time goes by we find ourselves bored and its rather high rating drops significantly. The part of the alien is also a little inadequate, and although Gerry Shandling does a good job, everyone knows he could have done better. Fantastic opening scene - horrifically dull ending scene.

I watched this film at a friends house after being told it was 'hilarious!' We had a straight choice between this and 'XXX,' and there has never been a more stupid mistake in the history of mankind! Ive never been so glad I had to go home in all my life! I never saw the end of the film, and I never want to, it is without a doubt the most godawful piece of film making Ive ever seen. Some films are bad due to bad acting, bad storylines, bad script, bad casting, this one had the lot! I havent seen Annette Bening in anything since, I imagine she was booted out of Hollywood permanently after this debacle! (Not that Im picking on her, she's usually a very good actress.) Any film with X-Rated sex content, and humour for the under 5s has an obvious problem!

At the risk of sounding patronizing, I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I really appreciated the premise, and I was a longtime fan of Shandling. I was a faithful viewer of "It's Gary Shandling's Show", and less so of "The Larry Sanders Show" as I never had HBO. Something just did not work here. All the gags fell flat. Shandling was not in any way appealing in this role. You can see that since this movie, he hasn't exactly been lighting up the screen. Anette Benning is such a good actress that she did not embarrass herself in this film, and almost made lemonade out of lemons here. But not quite. Even an actor of her talents could not prevent the cinematic equivalent of The Hindenburg from going down and exploding. This was one of only two films I saw in a theater that I have ever walked out on before they were over. I stomached about 50% of this flick before I could stand no more and walked out. (The other film was Eddie Murphy's "Boomerang".) I had to stop for a burger on the way home just to cheer myself up. Avoid at all costs.

I couldn't wait for this movie to end (the other two people I was with liked it better so I couldn't leave). In the words of Jay Sherman: "It stinks". It has a few funny moments. Most of the humor is cheap sexual humor - watch any TV sitcom and you'll get the same results. Save your money at the theatre and the video store - if you're looking for funny from this Shandling flick, try Albert Brooks or Woody Allen instead.

When I saw that Mike Nichols was making another picture, I was automatically interested. After making motion pictures like The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, he had slipped severely, making only a couple decent films since. So, naively, I went to What Planet Are You From to find out if he could stem the tide of failures. And, triumphantly, I left the motion picture with an answer: no, no, no. If What Planet Are You From? succeeds at anything (and that's a big IF), it does succeed at having a surprisingly talented cast and crew, for what otherwise represents a made for USA motion picture. Starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, Greg Kinnear, and Ben Kingsley, I expected something decent, at least from the last three. But, they all disappointed me. The story of What Planet Are You From is a one-gag premise: Garry Shandling plays an alien who has been sent to earth to impregnate a woman, thereby allowing his alien race to reproduce and slowly take over Earth. That ends up being the entire story. Never any twists, never anything clever that the beginning of the film indicated. The film opens with thousands of the aliens being taught what human women are like, providing the only legitimate laugh of the entire film. Then, Shandling is sent to earth, bumbles around, meeting the sleazy Greg Kinnear, who takes him to AA meetings to meet women. He meets Annette Bening, who seems to be phoning in her performance as a recovering alcoholic/real estate agent. She insists on marrying before having sex, and so the alien marries her. All through this point, every time the alien had tried to reproduce, his mechanical genitals made a whirring noise. Apparently, this passed for humor, because Nichols depended on this noise for about 30 minutes of the film. Then, they marry, they try to have children, are frustrated, and eventually she gives birth. Then, the baby is kidnaped by Kingsley (the leader of Shandling's planet), and the alien returns to steal it back, setting up a trite ending and giving the audience a merciful stay of execution. The film is a massive disappointment from everyone involved, and I give it 1/2 out of 5 stars.

To think that I was actually looking forward to seeing this! This poor man's Galaxy Quest-meets-Starman has only one redeeming feature in John Goodman's airline investigator (this is hardly surprising as he's good in just about every movie he's in). Garry Shandling lacks any warmth or charm in the lead role....and that's after he's supposed to have learnt how to feel emotions. Annette Benning is slightly less neurotic, but no less annoying than her American Beauty character. And Ben Kingsley? He just looks embarrassed by the whole affair, no doubt wondering why he got involved in the first place! Poor 3/10

I have long been a fan of Gary Shandling ever since his show on Fox. He has a perfect way a delivering the dead pan punch line. Gary is perfectly cast as the emotionless alien who comes to impregnate a woman in order to take over our world. What Planet Are You From has its flaws and arguments could be made for not liking this film. At times it is uneven and not sure what direction it wants to take. Sub plots are left unexplained or ended in a somewhat confusing fashion. All of these distractions are a side note to hilarious writing and stellar acting from a great cast including John Goodman, Greg Kinnear, Linda Fiorentino, and Annette Benning. The jokes are all dead on and Shandling's performance, especially as he develops into the more atypical male stereotype, is brilliant.

Garry Shandling is an unattractive man who looks as if he is suffering from a perpetual state of constipation, and, can you believe it?, he still manages to be enjoyable (and even loveable, of all things) in his latest movie, What Planet Are You From? Despite a clunky title and an unlikely leading man (even Shandling himself seems stunned by the reality of it), this movie manages to just barely pull off a decent performance. The premise seems much more suited to an hour and a half of repetitive * jokes (and, in some ways, it gets close to that): Shandling plays Harold Anderson, an alien from a planet inhabited by impotent, super-intelligent men bent on universal domination. Led by a stiff-lipped Ben Kingsley (whose neck seems to have disappeared) this race of uber-men has lost all semblances of emotion, let alone sexuality. In their quest for universal rulership, they have chosen Earth as their next target. Their goal? To impregnate a human woman and begin populating the world with "their kind." Of the millions of available aliens, Shandling is chosen as their ambassador, and after being fitted with an artificial and somewhat dysfunctional * (it hums when erect), he travels to Earth in a glowing white ball and immediately begins incorporating the lessons he learned about the delicate art of female seduction. For instance, he has an endless bevy of "nice footwear" and "nice perfume" remarks, including some slang: "Kitty likes to scratch!" Sounds like a one-hour one-liner, huh? Fortunately, it's not. It's safe to say the movie would have fallen flat on its alien face if it weren't for the stellar performance of Annette Benning as the one woman who finally falls for the bumbling alien's "charms." She manages to take this ludicrous premise and bring a touching dose of reality to it, giving a normally crass idea a glimmer of merit. She is what diversifies Shandling's occasionally monotonous character, and it is through her eyes that the film sheds its hokiness and becomes a real movie. Co-stars John Goodman and Greg Kinnear, to their credit, do a great job as well, both of them displaying an untypical amount of restraint. As far-fetched as it seems, it is the undertones and quiet moments in this film that render it watchable. Likewise, those moments are what keep the joke from getting old. Director Mike Nichols (who gave us such gems as Catch-22 and The Graduate) has combined the quiet soul of his Regarding Henry with the flamboyant ditziness of his The Birdcage to come up with something truly remarkable: a Garry Shandling movie that works. It certainly has its flaws, like most flicks, and many times the plot seems to stop and start just like Harold's malfunctioning member. However, although the jokes reach levels the man from Nantucket would be proud of, they mostly act as reminders that, no matter how much we poke fun at sex and marriage, most of the jokes are true. What Planet Are You From? has its out-there moments, but it still hits close to home.