What Planet Are You From? (1999) |
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What Planet Are You From? (1999) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy |
Main Menu Introduction Dolby Digital Trailer-City Isolated Musical Score Theatrical Trailer Featurette-Making Of Biographies-Cast & Crew |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1999 | ||
| Running Time | 100:37 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (51:27) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Mike Nichols |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Garry Shandling Annette Bening Greg Kinnear Ben Kingsley Linda Fiorentino John Goodman |
| Case | Soft Brackley-Transp | ||
| RPI | $36.95 | Music | Carter Burwell |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Isolated Music Score Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English German Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
The movie is based around an alien, Harold Anderson (Garry Shandling), who comes from a technologically advanced civilization containing only cloned males that for some reason all appear different. It is his race's intention to colonize Earth, gaining control from the inside by reproducing and having their offspring rise to positions of power.
Harold's mission on earth is to conceive a child with a human female, a task made difficult as his race have lost both their emotions and their reproductive abilities. In order to complete his mission, Harold is fitted with artificial genitalia which hums when he is aroused. Unfortunately, the alien's information in regards to Earth customs is lacking significant details and this poses numerous problems for Harold.
This film is never able to escape the terrible plot and script that was written by Garry Shandling and Michael Leeson. The film was directed by Mike Nichols who has previously directed films such as The Graduate, Primary Colors, Working Girl and The Birdcage. While the cast seem to have enjoyed making this film, as evidenced by their comments in the short behind-the-scenes featurette on the DVD, they are unable to give it any real direction. The performances from Annette Bening, Ben Kingsley, Greg Kinnear and John Goodman are all good, but the material they have to work with lets them down.
The failure of this film must be blamed upon Garry Shandling, who wrote the story and the screenplay, co-produced the film and was also the lead character. Previously, we have seen Garry produce some excellent comic works such as The Larry Sanders Show, but unfortunately this effort never loses the feeling that it should have been produced as a short comedy skit.
One thing to note when watching the start of the movie is that the head on the Columbia Pictures logo has been replaced with that of Annette Bening.
The transfer remains consistently sharp throughout except for one very brief scene featuring Annette Bening at 66:40. The transfer shows no low level noise and exhibits excellent shadow detail at all times.
The colour is accurate throughout and shows no irregularities.
No MPEG artefacts were seen at any time during the film. Aliasing is almost non-existent in this transfer and only appears slightly during a shot of a car grill at 71:45. Film artefacts are very rarely seen during this transfer and at no time are they distracting. One of the small number of occasions that film artefacts occur can be seen at 32:06 for a single frame.
There are 17 different subtitles presented for the feature. I viewed the English titles and they seemed to be constantly accurate. I was unable to check the accuracy of the other subtitle tracks.
The layer change occurs at 51:27 between scenes and is slightly disruptive.
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There are two Dolby Digital 5.1 448Kb/s audio tracks provided for the feature, in both English and German. I listened primarily to the English track but also sampled the German.
At no stage were there any problems with audio sync on the English track. The German track had the usual sync issues but appeared to be a reasonable quality dub.
The score by Carter Burwell is never imposing and suits the feature well but is quite forgettable.
The surround and sub channels are used throughout the movie to provide support for the score and sound effects.
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| Audio Sync | |
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| Surround Channel Use | |
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NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot |  |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Toshiba 1200, using S-Video output |
| Display | Sony KP-E41SN11. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Front left/right: ME75b; Center: DA50ES; rear left/right: DA50ES; subwoofer: NAD 2600 (Bridged) |
| Speakers | Front left/right: VAF DC-X; Center: VAF DC-6; rear left/right: VAF DC-7; subwoofer: Custom NHT-1259 |