Word: planetful
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...story manages complete a cliche checklist of space movie standards: Personal and heart-warming introduction to the astronauts who are preparing to go to Mars after years of training and personal sacrifice. Check. Crew set to leave, but one guy (whose lifelong dream is to travel to the red planet) is left behind because of heartless bureaucracy. Check. Guy left behind is sad and left alone to gaze mistily into the camera and yearn for his one big shot. Check. Attractive astronauts go to Mars, but meet a nasty disaster and all end up dead, except for one. Double Check...
Harold Anderson (Garry Shandling) is a visitor from a faraway, all-male, procreatively challenged planet. His mission on earth is to impregnate a woman and bring their offspring home for breeding purposes. To accomplish the task, he has been equipped with an artificial metal penis, which hums audibly when its interest is, shall we say, aroused. Why does it do that? Because "it doesn't know the words," snaps Linda Fiorentino, playing a woman immune to Harold's charms...
That's the best joke in What Planet Are You From? Considering the number of variations played on it, you might argue that it's the only one. Mostly, Shandling plays an overgrown adolescent of a familiar, earthbound sort. He's befuddled and inept as he attempts to comprehend the rules of the mating game...
...result is a movie that is at once smug and lazy, qualities fatal to comedy. And qualities increasingly prevalent in an era enervated by the ironic ideal. (Wouldn't it be ironic if irony destroyed our ability to make one another laugh?) At some point in What Planet Are You From? you start to wonder how these people acquired the air of unearned superiority that makes the movie seem so old and tired...
...last, a girl-centered comic book that should actually appeal to girls (and even their parents). Krazy, Honey and WooWoo, members of the band Yeah!, have achieved superstardom on every planet but their own, Earth. Here, they struggle with bad gigs and aliens who have crushes on them. Separately, writer Peter Bagge (Hate) and artist Gilbert Hernandez (Luba) have well-deserved reputations as creators of some of comics' most complex female characters. In Yeah!--drawn with a clean line and lively colors--they have collaborated to produce a pop-culture, sci-fi, mainstream comic that finally offers an alternative...