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What Planet Are You From?
Sony Pictures Entertainment


9.0

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and language

Starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, John Goodman, and Greg Kinnear

An alien (Shandling) is assigned to Earth to save his planet. To do this he must breed with a woman on Earth; however, as an alien his "plumbing" isn't quite the same.

GENRE(S):	Sci-fi
WRITTEN BY:	Garry Shandling (also story) Michael Leeson (also story) Ed Solomon Peter Tolan
DIRECTED BY:	Mike Nichols
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 18, 2000 Video: July 18, 2000 Theatrical: March 3, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	104 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This comedy is packed with p---- jokes, the cruder the better.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.

Miami Herald Phoebe Flowers

An unapologetically stupid and implausible movie, but in the best possible way -- it's so sure of itself, it wins you over.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The trouble is that the film forsakes one sort of energy for another, and the downshift is a drag.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Nothing more than a sort of dumb, sort of clever fish out of water comedy.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

It's still easily the funniest movie of the year.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The film is almost as shaky as the science, but Nichols knows how to get the most out of what amounts to a one-joke comedy, and Bening works virtual miracles.

Film.com Tom Keogh

Let your children have their childhood while you have a rare, grown-up experience at the multi-plex for a change.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

In another universe - though it is difficult to imagine which one - Garry Shandling might be sexy.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The film's asset, in a walk, is Bening, whose comic timing puts Shandling to shame.

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

Shandling and Nichols strain to reach a mainstream audience and wind up sounding like they, too, have been trained to tell us what we want to hear. Sorry, guys, but you don't score.

Slate David Edelstein

Garry Shandling is poignant and hilarious as an alien stud.

TNT RoughCut Graham Verdon

With Gary Shandling appearing in just about every scene, only fans of his trademark whiny, disinterested delivery and sexist un-political correctness have a hope of enjoying his new film.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Goodman's comic delivery gets maximum mileage from a few amusing situations, though.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Nichols usually can lure A-list casts to even C-grade projects, and this is no exception.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

It's good for a few guffaws and chuckles, but in between the screen has a tendency to stretch at the corners and go flat.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Good for a few lascivious titters but quite lacking in the sort of comic bite and social satire one hopes for in the work of Mike Nichols.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

There's a certain satisfaction in recognizing that Harold -- even when he inevitably starts to feel, just like a human -- remains something of an a--hole.

TV Guide Steve Simels

Unfortunately the whole thing is less than the sum of its parts, despite a frequently droll script and a great performance from Shandling.

Mr. Showbiz Richard T. Jameson

This one somehow gets about 300 percent better in its last quarter-hour -- suddenly this is a movie worth watching -- and it's over.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Has its sinfully funny moments. Funny, that is, if you appreciate a certain cynical clamminess -- or Buck Henry seediness -- to your comedy.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

The buildup to social criticism in what at first appears to be pointless and partly misogynist exploitation is subtly impressive.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Adequately breezy and sleazy -- a movie about the horniest man in the universe looking for a little one-night stand.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Falls disastrously flat.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here is the most uncomfortable movie of the new year, an exercise in feel-good smut.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Bening's prickliness is pure delight, but there's only so much she can do. It's a terrible fate for an actress to be upstaged by a humming p----.

Time Richard Schickel

At once smug and lazy, qualities fatal to comedy.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Shandling comes off as a sleazebag -- all that's missing are the gold chains, tufted chest hair and English Leather.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Sporadically funny, often strange and almost never poignant.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Quite possibly, this could have been a hit back in 1975 or so, and almost certainly for Blake Edwards, but here and now it's just a puzzling aberration.

Newsweek David Ansen

The combination of Shandling's button-down TV sensibility and Nichols's good taste produces a film whose tone is out of sync with the simple, ribald conceit and is only mildly amusing at best.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Wants to be sweet and dark at the same time, but it is as distant as a planet's satellite.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andre D. gave it a10:
One of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Makes a brilliant play on man's insecurities as viewed from an alien.

David B. gave it a9:
I'm a tough critic. And this movie, though a colossal bomb, is both extremely intelligent and funny as hell. Some of the comedy is broad and physical, but most of it is actually dry and sophisticated. Maybe that's what threw the reviewers. And the American public. It shouldn't have. But then, some people don't think Albert Brooks (the early movies) are funny.

JIMJIM gave it an8:
Funny but Strange.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
I think the critics were just too hard. Loosen up. It was hilarious. That's all there is to it.

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What Planet Are You From? Sony Pictures Entertainment

What Planet Are You From?
Sony Pictures Entertainment