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

From: Jon Popick <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Feb 2000 18:32:04 GMT

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"

This is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t judge a book by its
cover.  What Planet Are You From? might be the dumbest name for a
feature film since Stop or My Mom Will Shoot.  And on the surface, the
story of an alien being sent to Earth to impregnate a woman seemed
awful.  Knowing the title of the film, and that it starred Garry
Shandling, I envisioned the actor covered in a Lycra spacesuit with
antennae, wrinkling up his nose and asking everyone if his ass looked
big.

Don’t let the name and the plotline scare you off.  Sure, Shandling
isn’t much of a leading man, but he did create two of the best
television shows in the last dozen years (Fox’s It’s Garry Shandling’s
Show and HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show).  Planet‘s story was conceived by
Shandling, who also shares a screenwriting credit with three other
writers (including Sanders and Analyze This scribe Peter Tolan).  It’s
basically just the combination of two old, over-used plot formulas – the
“guy trying to get laid” story and the “fish out of water” story.  Think
of it as a cross between American Pie and…well, anything starring
Brendan Fraser.  Except Planet is very entertaining.

Shandling plays H1449-6, a resident of a planet four solar systems
removed from our own.  Their sphere is thousands of years ahead of Earth
technologically, its inhabitants cloned as opposed to bred.  Thanks to
the cloning, they are also genetically free of emotion and their
shriveled private parts are totally useless.  Of course, their lack of
both sex and emotion makes them want to take over the entire universe.
H1449-6 is hand-picked by Graydon (Ben Kingsley, Alice in Wonderland),
the planet’s leader, to travel to Earth and father a child in what will
be the beginning of their slow transformation of Earth into a planet
full of similarly dressed, sexless clones.  Which makes it sound like
the crowd at a NASCAR race.

H1449-6 assimilates into Phoenix, Arizona as Harold Anderson, a banker
specializing in commercial and residential lending.  Armed only with
corny pick-up lines, Harold starts trying to get laid before he even
hits terra firma.  Having been taught that complimenting women will lead
to fornication, Harold is surprised when his “You smell nice” and “I
like your shoes” greetings are rebuffed by every female he comes in
contact with.  To make matters worse, Harold was also fitted with a
mechanical penis that whirs to life at the slightest hint of a sexual
encounter, growing louder and louder as the chance of sex approaches.

Harold comes in contact with a zany bunch of Earthlings, including his
pussyhound co-worker (Greg Kinnear, Mystery Men), an FAA agent (John
Goodman, Bringing out the Dead) and a struggling real estate agent
(Annette Bening, American Beauty) that eventually becomes the target for
his super sperm.  Sure, there are problems with the script (why isn’t
his mission to knock up as many women as possible?) and anyone should be
able to figure out that Harold will start to act like an Earth male and
develop emotions, but Planet is a still a laugh-riot.

Planet was directed by Mike Nichols (Primary Colors), who successfully
captures Shandling’s unique brand of humor and is nearly able to pull
off the idea of the awkward comedian as a leading man.  The acting is
fine all around, especially Bening, who, once again, plays a real estate
agent (a la her Oscar-nominated turn in American Beauty…and when did
Bening replace Jane Wyman as Columbia’s torchbearer?).  Planet co-starts
Linda Fiorentino, Camryn Manheim, Nora Dunn and Ann Cusack, while
Janeane Garofalo appears in just one scene.

1:42 - R for nudity, sexual content and adult language