Subject: Review: What Planet Are You From? (2000)

From: Chuck Schwartz <[email-masked]>
Date: 5 Mar 2000 19:31:10 GMT

CrankyCritic® movie reviews: What Planet  Are You From?
Rated  [R], 105 minutes
Starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening
Story by Garry Shandling & Michael Leeson
Screenplay by Shandling & Leeson and Ed Solomon and Peter Tolan
Directed by Mike Nichols
website: www.sony.com/whatplanet/

IN SHORT: "It's Garry Shandling's Movie..."

....which is how the advertising folks should have billed this very funny
flick, 'cuz none of 'em obviously watched the damned thing. Thus the ad
campaign which implies that an alien being from a planet of men and only
men, comes to earth to father a child and save his planet. Nope. The
advanced society of said planet wants to conquer earth. It's said so
right at the top of the flick, as Star Wars-like background titles roll
up the screen. Why making one baby with an earthling would enable these
aliens to conquer earth is beyond me, but logic needs no reason in this
story, a perfect setup to Garry Shandling's type of reaction humor,
which is firing on all cylinders in this flick.

And just forty or fifty years ago, all alien planets were stocked with
busty, barely clad women, all desperately in need of a good shtup. Now,
in the first Year Zero in a century, we are confronted with the
intellectual and technological inhabitants of a Planet we'll call X, all
male and all dressed in black and gray Armani suits, looking like the
clones that they are. Without women, this society has gone beyond the
need for emotions or relationships or the private parts that play such
an important part in each.

Thus, H1449-6 (hereafter Harold Anderson) is dispatched to Arizona, USA,
to find and knock up one of our own. This being accomplished, their
dastardly plan to do away with our various lifestyles would be underway
.. . . except that they've sent Garry Shandling. Harold's assignment has
him posing as a loan officer at a bank, where an incredibly sleazy
co-worker (Greg Kinnear) shows him the ropes of picking up chicks. One
chick happens to be Susan Hart (Annette Bening) who has enough problems
of her own and has dealt with them by deciding, among other things, not
to have sex until she is married. Harold, whose mind is on nothing but
procreation, pops the question after one date. From there on in, What
Planet... quickly becomes a learning experience for the ET as to what
relationships truly mean. Just as director Mike Nichols' The Birdcage
wasn't as much about gay life as it was about families, so is What
Planet... more about the male/female thing than alien conquest.

OK, we'll forgive the marketing people for this one...

What Planet Are You From? is a Garry Shandling comedy and it delivers
all the chuckles you associate with GS, once again taking a concept fit
for a trashy TV sitcom (and, yes, I do sorta kinda like 3rd Rock From
The Sun, though it took awhile) and elevates it to a level of comedy fit
for adults. Any fan knows that Shandling has made an art of creating
inept, and intellectually funny, characters. Any fan will not be
disappointed. With a very small dose of low-brow humor added to the mix,
the folks just looking for a good time will not be disappointed, either.

John Goodman plays the FAA investigator hot on Harold's tail. Teevee
faces Nora Dunn, Camryn Manheim play Susan's friends. Ben Kingsley plays
Graydon, leader of Planet X (and while July 14 is still months -- and a
different movie studio -- away, any X-Men fanboy is going to catch at
least two very in jokes at the end of this flick). All are positive
reinforcement to the gags.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were
Cranky able to set his own price to What Planet Are Your From?, he would
have paid...

$6.00

If you're not a Shandling fan, What Planet... is still a better than
average time in the dark. For those of us that wonder why we should
shell out for something that's been done in broad comic strokes on
teevee . . . 'cuz it's funny. That's why.

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by, Chuck Schwartz. All Rights Reserved. Cranky on the web at
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