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What Planet Are You
From?
Gary Shandling plays an alien, given the name of Harold Anderson, and chosen to impregnate a woman in order to, eventually, take over Earth. The details are somewhat fuzzy, and, as it turns out, unimportant. Harold sits amid hundreds of other penis-free males to learn how to seduce the Earth female - listen to everything she says and respond with "uh-huh," compliment her shoes, her various body parts, and how she smells. So off Harold goes to Earth to find a woman who will have his baby. Armed with a vibrating penis that hums whenever he's aroused, and not much in the way of natural charm (Shandling's usual charm is as diminished as his genitals), Harold tries out a few lines on the first women he sees. These first few attempts are funny enough to make us understand how the film got made in the first place: abrupt come-ons in unlikely places, driving home the point that this intellectually superior alien knows as much about women as the hunk of junk he rode in on - Harold coming on to Janeane Garofalo after she thinks the plane is going to crash and begins to shake, to which Harold responds, "shaking women turn me on." In other words, the film is really a stand-up routine spread out over an hour and a half.
Shandling is better at playing the sidekick who offers up piggish remarks about women, acting a tad pathetic but not having an entire film resting on his performance. Greg Kinnear, on the other hand, is better at playing leading men, not the sidekicks he's always cast as, and would have been a much more satisfying Harold. Ultimately, even with the charisma and charm of Annette Bening, the film hits one note throughout, never going deep enough to reveal anything about male/female relationships, but rather making the same old ones about women and marriage. There's an undercurrent of nastiness against women that must come from Shandling's obvious distrust and vague disinterest in what women might have to offer other than a warm place to put it and motherly comfort. Bening counteracts this by finding a real substance to the flaky Susan. It might have been more interesting if Harold had discovered that women are worth keeping around, and not just to bear children and to smell nice but because women make life worth living. The scene where Harold tells all the men about how great women are never came. Instead, Harold just fixates on his life with Susan that he can't explain - he just feels good when he's around her. Certainly, Mike Nichols has his pick of the acting pool, which explains the talented cast, including Linda Fiorentino, who breathes some hot air into the otherwise tepid plot, gusting in as Perry's sexually ravenous wife, but then being dropped after her job of fulfilling a few jokes is complete. John Goodman is good at interpreting the silliness of the concept, playing a Mulder-esque detective hot on Harold's trail. All is not lost, however. There are more than a few funny moments in What Planet Are You From? One line in particular lived up to Nichols and Shandling's reputation: "Your footwear is attractive. May I insert my penis in you?"
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Let's
just get one thing straight. If there were an advanced society consisting
of men, the last thing they would let shrink and disappear would be their
genitals. Furthermore, many of the things that drive power, ambition,
violent tendencies, and facial hair are, shall we say, inspired by the
dangly bits between their hairy legs. Knowing even a little bit about
human nature makes the premise of What Planet Are You From? ring
absolutely false.
Harold
settles in to life on earth, with his loan officer job, his nice home,
and his penis that whirs like a hand-blender at the most inopportune times
(a clever device to let women in on how hard it is to be a man, so to
speak). Lucky for us, the love interest is just around the corner when
Harold is brought to an AA meeting by his Male Chauvinist Pig work buddy,
Perry (Greg Kinnear). One of the newly sober is none other than the lovely
Susan Hart (Annette Bening), a free spirited waif who is bossed around
by her friends and seems to sway wherever the wind takes her, usually
into the arms of a loser. Susan finds her way into Harold's life by accident
(literally) and an unexpected attachment begins to form. But Shandling
isn't enough of an actor to pull of Harold's confusion at his own feelings,
which aren't really feelings since he's supposedly not human but alien.
This is, of course, the point: men are not human, they're men! They don't
talk about their feelings because they're not sure they have any; they
like to watch football, they like to have sex, they get aroused constantly
and will do just about anything to get laid.