Out of orbit

>> Garry Shandling shags his way through What Planet Are You From?

by JASON BOGDANERIS

Fans still mourning Larry Sanders will be happy to see the show's creator and star working again. Unfortunately, What Planet Are You From?, a collaboration between Garry Shandling and Mike Nichols (The Graduate) is only a mildly entertaining effort that never approaches the type of iconoclastic humour Shandling is renowned for.

This cosmic shtick involves a race of super-intelligent beings from an all-male planet who send one of their members to Earth to get laid and become a daddy in order to enslave the planet. The perpetually goon-faced Shandling prepares for his mission by practicing pick-up lines on a hologram, like: "May I insert my penis in you?" Once on Earth, he gets a job at a bank and starts pursuing every woman with a pulse. His bumbling attempts at seduction and noisily humming mechanical penis are played up for all they're worth. After a few false starts, a sleazy colleague (Greg Kinnear) who cruises AA meetings helps him meet a suitably vulnerable candidate.

Playing an ex-alcoholic with a horrible romantic track record, Annette Bening does a fabulous job and provides the story with its only real dramatic tension. She agrees to marry the man of her dreams when he reveals that his "mission in life is to have a baby."

Meanwhile, John Goodman charmingly roars onto the scene as an FAA investigator, who traces strange happenings on several aircraft to a suspicious man with a vibrating crotch. Believing he's on the verge of the mother lode alien siting, Goodman goes into full conspiracy mode, producing some of the funniest moments in the film. Things take a predictable turn when our alien protagonist begins to lose sight of his mission, and starts to "feel" things, experiencing guilt and a sense of responsibility, as their Rosemary's Baby comes to term.

The film certainly has its moments, but it's hampered by Shandling's range, which doesn't extend beyond his just-peed-in-my-pants sheepish grin. Fortunately, the performances of Bening and Goodman add some depth when the fish-out-of-water bit gets tired.

Overall, the effort is slightly uneven and predictable and will depend on your tolerance of Shandling's laconic mugging, which seems to waver in and out of character. The real theme of this movie, however, seems to be the gentrifying effect Hollywood has on creative and original talent.

Just ask any alumnus of SCTV.

What Planet are You From? opens Friday, March 3.