Cheap What Planet Are You From? (Video) (Garry Shandling, Annette Bening) (Mike Nichols) Price

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Customer Reviews of What Planet Are You From?

What Planet is this Movie from?
If this film was directed by someone else besides Mike Nichols, WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM? might have been a major disappointment. Fortunately, under the helm of Nichols, it is a decent comedy with a premise that is not very original and which has been explored upon so many times. Gary Shandling is an alien sent to earth to learn about the human species for future takeover,and to impregnate an earth female, then to report back to his home planet with the alien/human baby specimen. Along the way, he gets a job here on earth, makes a few friends (Greg Kinnear), and tries to bed every women he sees while trying to keep his "humming" penis quiet when he is near any women. This is one of the funny plot devices in this movie. Shandling does a decent job carrying the film being the lead, and has a few bright spots of banter and dialogue which he could only say with his dead pan,straight face delivery and subtle humor. There is the conventional ufo/alien hunter played by John Goodman, and the typical human victim played very well by Annette Bening. Overall, an interesting and entertaining movie. The script/plot could have been lifted from one of those B-Movie, soft porn flicks shown on Cinemax after midnight, but under the helm of Mike Nichols,with a script from Shandling, and a first rate cast, it is brought to another level. It is a decent sci fi/satirical comedy.

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This is a great sci-fi comedy!
Garry Shandling plays an alien who is sent to Earth to have a kid with an Earth woman. He meets Annette Bening, an AA-member, and soon realizes that social life isn't as simple as in the simulator back home.

This is a very funny comedy, directed by Mike Nichols and co-written by Garry Shandling. He and Annette Bening are great in the lead parts, supported by equally good Greg Kinnear, John Goodman and Ben Kingsley. "The funniest movie of the year", some critics said. It probably is. It's great fun, that's for sure. I strongly recommend it!

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underrated
The set up of this film seems simple and silly enough. On a planet a thousand years more technologically advanced than Earth, the entire population is male clones with no sex organs, no emotions, and
nothing better to do than conquer the Universe. Their technique--though it's never explained--involves impregnating a woman on the planet they wish to take over. So their leader, Graydon--played by
Ben Kingsley in a nice turn--instructs them in the fine art of seducing an Earth woman, which to their minds mainly consists of complimenting her hair and shoes. Their quickest learner, H1449-6 (Gary
Shandling), is chosen to perform the deed and is whisked to Earth where he is deposited in the lavatory of a passenger jet. The disruption this causes the flight brings him to the attention of an NTSB inspector
(John Goodman). But he is able to rapidly establish himself in a job as Harold Anderson, bank loan officer, and, thanks to the womanizing connivance of a co-worker (Greg Kinnear), he's soon romancing a
recovering alcoholic, Susan Hart (Annette Benning), who they meet at an AA meeting where they've gone to scam babes. And so we have the basic dramatic tension of the film: Will Harold be discovered
before he can complete his mission?

The film gets to this point mostly on the strength of battle-of-the-sexes humor and some physical comedy involving the mechanical penis that Shandling's character has had attached to enable him to
complete his mission. It continues in this vein through the early portion of Harold's relationship with Susan, but when he ends up having to marry her to get her to bear his child the inevitable humanizing takes
place and a more serious message starts to peak out from beneath the more sophomoric sex comedy and the unfortunately disjointed story line. This initial message concerns the utter emptiness of the
modern mating game, which is all about sex and only peripherally, if at all, about meaningful interaction between two people. By the end--when Harold realizes that Graydon won't let Susan keep their baby
and that the experience of love, loyalty, sex, death, and all the rest that makes us human is superior to the supposedly advanced bioengineered culture of his home world--it's become very much a political
film, whether intentionally or no. It comes down so firmly on the side of humanity as it is, with all our glorious and maddening imperfections, and against the vision of a future that is perfect but soulless, that
regardless of an over reliance on genitalia jokes it ends up being a profoundly conservative movie, and a pretty funny one at that.

GRADE: B+