I had heard nothing but bad things about 2000’s What Planet Are You From? for a couple of decades before finally seeing it.  But it was directed by Mike Nichols, and reading about it in the Elaine May biography Miss May Does Not Exist had my interest piqued. I wondered how bad a movie could be from the director of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? and The Graduate.

Well, he also directed The Day of the Dolphin, so the answer is pretty bad.  And it lives down to its reputation.  This is a production that fails from the concept down, with nearly every element a misstep.

The aloof, low-emotion demeanor that had been Garry Shandling’s shtick for decades should serve him well here, as an alien from a planet where everybody has had emotion bred out of them over time.  That breeding was accomplished through cloning, as there are no women for whatever reason.

He is the top student in a training program to go to Earth to seduce and impregnate a woman.  Then the resulting baby will be brought back to this planet.  I am not sure why this operation is necessary, if they were getting by OK with cloning.  Also, I was bewildered by why they only send one person, when it seems they should send as many men as possible, and to as many locations around the world at the same time.  And this is all in preparation for an eventual all-out invasion of Earth, and I don’t understand why they want to do that, except they are all over-achieving men.

The genitals of the aliens have also disappeared over time.  If this was evolution, the slow disappearance of the organs could be chalked up to being unnecessary for survival of the species.  However, since they are cloned, that doesn’t make any sense.

Regardless of the cause, Shandling is equipped with a mechanical penis.  It would seem to be fully functional, though it has the unfortunate quirk of making a variety of loud, mechanical sounds when he’s aroused.  Needless to say, that is a deterrent to his goal, though I suspect many women would not mind a guy having a combination penis and vibrator.  At least, if not, then the Mojo Nixon song “She’s Vibrator Dependent” has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Even less fortunate is the training he received on his home planet to talk to women.  He is told to do little more than compliment women on their hair, eyes and shoes and to respond with “uh-huh” when there’s a pause in the woman talking. 

And those women probably will be talking about men, given this sorry script.  The humor in this is at the level of a sitcom, and a lesser sitcom at that.  Eventually, Shandling will be watching football and obsessed with finding a new TV remote after Annette Bening smashes it because he’s not listening to her.  It is little better than the average episode of Home Improvement.

She’s all hysterical and illogical, because that’s how pregnant women are in this kind of thing.  Shandling acquiesced to marrying her, as she required before doing the horizontal mambo. 

I’m amazed she decided to tie the knot, given he met her through the duplicity of picking up women at an AA meeting.  This was actually at the prodding of an oily co-worker played by Roy Kinnear, a married man who is always on the prowl for more action on the side.  He’s also taking credit for the work of our protagonist at the bank where they’re employed.

Kinnear seems to be having fun in this film, possibly more so than anybody else.  Ben Kingsley is cast as the alien planet’s leader and he, while he gives it his best, looks vaguely uncomfortable.  It is, indeed, strange to see the man who played Gandhi in this. Or perhaps he wasn’t thrilled by the idea of his character being summoned back to Earth by Shandling repeatedly, as the final leg of that journey is always through the plumbing of an airborne plane, where he materializes in the bathroom.  The script, mercifully, does not explore the possibility of that being occupied at the time of his arrival.

Each time this happens, there are bright lights from the sky which engulf the aircraft and there’s something akin to severe turbulence.  This draws the attention of John Goodman’s FAA agent, who is convinced Shandling is an alien being.  Goodman is solid and jocular as always, though something about his performance has a whiff of desperation.

There are also cameos from comediennes you’ll recognize from many other movies and TV shows.  Jane Lynch is here for less than a minute as the leader of that AA chapter.  Judy Greer has a thankless bit as a flight attendant which is reprised when she is another familiar face Shandling encounters at that AA meeting.  At least she has one of the better lines in the script: “You know how it is, you’re up in the air at 30K feet with all those tiny bottles.”  Jeneane Garofalo is subject to one of Shandling’s least-appropriate attempts at a pick-up, when he tells the terrified fellow flyer on a plane that seems likely to crash: “I like it when a woman shakes.  It turns me on.  I like your shoes.  You smell nice.”

For an analogy about the differences between the sexes, What Planet Are You From? seems to have so little understanding of women that it might as well be made by aliens.  I definitely wouldn’t know what to do if I came home to find Bening doing a song and dance to “High Hopes”, and that’s even if I was married to her.  There’s even a bit where she hammers through an apartment wall to discover a window behind it, and that barrier seems to be about as thick and substantial as cardboard.  This is a movie which not only seems unable to understand basic human behavior, I’m not sure it even understands drywall.

Dir: Mike Nichols

Starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, John Goodman

Watched on Mill Creek blu-ray