GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Micitype Pretty Good

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

GeoPierpont When I found out Nichols directed at the end credits my jaw dropped, this easily surpasses Graduate and Virgina by far! This was fun, educational and surprisingly touching. The line by Linda cracked me up the most: why is he humming, oh he doesn't know the words...hilarious!I cannot fathom how I have never heard of this film from almost 15 years ago. No cultural references, no quotes, nada. Beats me, but glad I found it because I was in dire need of levity with panache after dying from exposure from watching all the grueling death, destruction and Armageddon fare of late.High recommend for Shandling (writes/acts in this) fans, wow is he Orange! Sure wish Linda could calm down enough for more film roles, she is absolutely stunning.

Isaac5855 I don't know why I'm afraid to admit it, but WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM? is definitely one of my guilty pleasures which I have viewed multiple times and still find highly entertaining. This cute and entertaining comedy stars Garry Shandling as an alien sent to earth to impregnate a woman and bring the baby back to his planet. He ends up targeting a real estate agent and recovering alcoholic (Annette Bening) as his target, but he doesn't plan on complications like love, marriage, friends, business competitors...those little things that we earthlings deal with on a daily basis but an alien from another planet would have no concept of. The opening scenes of the aliens being educated on the female erogenous zones are quite amusing as is Shandling's explanations of women to aliens when he returns to his planet after impregnating Bening and stealing the baby. Bening is charming in a rare comedic turn and even gets to sing. Greg Kinnear scores as a slimy co-worker of Shandling's and Linda Fiorentino makes the most of her brief appearance as his sexy wife. John Goodman is solid as a cynical UFO investigator who can't get anyone to believe there is an alien on earth and has to deal with his paranoid wife (Caroline Aaron) who is convinced the man is cheating on her. Ben Kingsley, in a refreshing change of pace, plays the stone-faced leader of Shandling's planet and Camryn Manheim, Nora Dunn, and Ann Cusack appear as Bening's girlfriends. Shandling co-wrote this comedy, smoothly directed by Mike Nichols, of all people. It's no masterpiece, but there are worse ways to kill 90 minutes and there are laughs to be had along the way.

ace098 I've loved this movie from the first time I saw it. Maybe I'm just a Garry Shandling fan, but I laughed my ASS off in the theater. So I had to buy it. So just the other day (Jan 15th/05) I had quite a few people over, kind of like a final end to the party. It was getting really late. So we started watching it, and we were all laughing non stop, everyone was like where did you get this movie from. None of them have ever even heard of it. So now they all want to get their own copy.It's a great movie from beginning to start. Any man would wish they had that kind of attitude with women, and would actually work with most of them.

george.schmidt WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM? (2000) *** Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, John Goodman, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley, Linda Fiorentino, Caroline Aaron, Nora Dunn, Camryn Manheim, Ann Cusack, Richard Jenkins, Janeane Garofalo (cameo). Garry Shandling, with his pinched expression suggesting comical disdain and quixotic confusion, makes his first starring bid as a film star (he has been on the silver screen prior to this ambitious effort in cameo roles here and there, but this is his first legitimate lead role) in the wildly funny sci-fi comedy that attempts to answer, really, are Women From Venus and Men From Mars? Shandling (who co- wrote the sharply funny screenplay with Michael Lesson, Ed Solomon & Peter Tolan), is the chosen cloned eunoch from a race of male aliens from a distant planet making final plans to invade Earth with his sole mission of achievement to get the wheels greased and running: to impregnate a woman.Seen in an assembled display of how to react to an Earth woman's conversations (the reliable and ubiquitous response of a barely interested: `uh-huh'), he clearly has his work cut out for him, particularly with the fact he has to have his sexual appendage attached for said close encounter (giving an all new meaning to `alien probing'). With a few words of wisdom by his leader Graydon (Kingsley) he is beamed aboard a commercial airliner and winds up in Seattle as the assumed identity of a Harold Anderson and walks into an unsuspecting bank as their awaited new accounts manager. Met by the smarmy Perry Gordon (Kinnear oozing oily malfeasance with canny glee), his soon-to-be rival, he quickly attempts to find his mate to be (only after several hilarious attempts from the airplane to his new job and the fact his member noisily vibrates whenever he's aroused).At an AA meeting (Perry explains it being one of the best pick-up spots in town for vulnerable women), he is taken by a recovering alcoholic named Susan Hart (the beguilingly sublimely funny Bening) and sets his phaser for stun.After hooking up with her in an unlikely situation and one date he explains to her in no uncertain terms that he wants to have a child. Susan, thinking finally a real man in touch with his emotional core, succumbs to his sweet yet eager charms and accepts his impromptu marriage proposal the next day. From there they honeymoon in Vegas with a marathon of sex (`126 times' he says matter-of-factly upon returning to work much to the amazement of Perry) figuring the seed has been planted and to just wait it out. What next comes is a series of truly unsettling changes in his being: namely emotions and finally realizing just what will become of his only child.Shandling - who has already become an icon with his pitch perfect accuracy of skewering the world of show business in the classic HBO series `The Larry Sanders Show' and his self-deprecating sexual hang-ups - scores big laughs as the alien with a heart (despite his overachieving goal of surpassing his horniness to save his race!), and makes this heavily trodded hybrid genre (heck go back to Robin Williams in `Mork & Mindy' or all the way back to Jerry Lewis as a misfit extraterrestrial in `Visit To A Small Planet') a welcome return. Getting his smart alecky alien to parallel the real off-balance of the sexes with men roles as being piggish louts who'd rather watch the game on the tube than actually talk to the women in their lives is one large step he attempts and neatly dispatches, as well as the well-timed deflations of pick-up lines he uses apparently circa 1965 with much hilarity ensuing.Bening proves to be a truly giften comic actress (hell her first big role in cinema was the John Candy/Dan Aykroyd romp `The Great Outdoors' and has shown up more recently in her acclaimed Oscar nominated turn in the pitch black comedy/drama, `American Beauty') and matches Shandling step by step as the confused 12 stepper attempting to find some footing in her second chance at some sort of life; she gives the film its soul.Goodman is in fine form as well as Roland Jones, the FAA agent who seems to be channeling Fox Mulder from `The X-Files' (hey one small quibble, why the HELL didn't Shandling even attempt to ask his good buddy David Duchovny, so furiously funny for his guest star shots on `Sanders', in a little piece of stunt casting??), who is hell bent to prove the alien exists when he's not busy trying to save his marriage to the suspicious Nadine (Aaron, a fine comic character actress best remembered as Woody Allen's sister in `Hannah And Her Sisters') who has many of the film's best lines: (after accusing Goodman of eyeballing a female co-worker: GOODMAN: `She's in a wheelchair, Nadine!' AARON: `Yeah, and don't think she doesn't play that for all it's worth!') Kinnear is proving to be a fine comic actor in his own right as the pompous skirt chasing Perry (although I found it unlikely since his spouse Helen is played by the incredibly hot Fiorentino - who also gets one of the film's best lines; after hearing Shandling's audible arousal : SHANDLING `It's my penis.it hums'. Beat. FIORENTINO: `Guess it doesn't know the words.') Directed by one of the living legends of comedy, Mike Nichols, the film ricochets with razor-gleaned timing, excellent performances and the ability of making a comedy that mines its laughs as well as aim for romantics in the long run: now that's an achievement!