On the hilarious TV series The Larry Sanders Show, you could scarcely tell the difference between Garry Shandling's smile and his grimace--he always looked as if Hollywood was giving him a bad case of gas. In this shockingly unfunny film, which Shandling cowrote, one can only imagine that the other writers severely diluted Shandling's original intentions--the wince, his only expression, seems real. Worse, you'll share his dismay. Shandling stars as an alien from a sterile race of clones who is sent to Earth to procreate with an Earth woman--exactly why this is necessary is left fuzzy. Ostensibly, given the title, this should lead to a raucous satire of dating mores. Instead, our space invader quickly takes up with a recovering alcoholic played by Annette Bening, and we chart their stridently bumpy but predictable relationship. Greg Kinnear costars as a slimy coworker; Linda Fiorentino plays Kinnear's man-eating wife; John Goodman portrays an FAA official who's onto Shandling's secret; and Ben Kingsley appears as the humorless leader of the alien planet. The single recurring joke involves the alien's genitalia and its propensity, when excited, to buzz loudly, which it does at least 10 or 15 times--after it ceases to be remotely amusing.
Shandling plays his character as so stunningly obtuse that whenever he manages a genuinely clever line it practically seems out of character; the rest of the talented cast flounders, similarly lost. Director Mike Nichols has staged painfully awkward scenes with elan in the (distant) past--think The Graduate or Carnal Knowledge--but What Planet Are You From? simply sits there, flailing desperately, seemingly aware of its own crushing tedium. Large chunks of the film appear to have been left on the editing room floor; it's hard to imagine material even more comically futile than what appears onscreen. --David Kronke
