The central problem of the story is presented immediately as the opening scene reveals a huge auditorium full of alien men listening attentively to their leader’s plan to conquer Earth by impregnating Earth’s women. Because women do not easily allow access to their reproductive organs, the aliens must undergo difficult training about ways of getting women to mate. Unfortunately, the training provides no information about the complexity of female psychology.

Garry Shandling plays Harold, the only candidate who successfully passes the training. Armed with a series of memorized, formulaic compliments and a newly attached human male sexual organ, he must go to Earth, have sex with a woman, get her pregnant, and leave. Harold expects to accomplish this in two days.

The straightforwardness of Harold’s approach is unbelievably funny. He is never quite ready for the variety of rejection responses he gets each time he rattles out one of his clichéd come-ons. Through the naiveté of this goal-oriented alien, we are able to laugh at the lines men use on women and the extent to which they actually work. We get a chance to laugh at the discomfort that comes with the male spirit of sexual domination, and the grief men and women give each other when the men’s need for sex begins to clash with the women’s need for intimacy and relationship. Because the hero is an outsider in the contemporary gender struggle, What Planet Are You From? peers beneath the pretentiousness and anxiety normally surrounding sex and turns them into an equal measure of good fun and refreshing insight.

When Harold realizes that accomplishing his mission is more complicated than he had anticipated, he settles for Susan (Annette Bening), the only woman who seems interested in him. (Incidentally, they met at an AA meeting Harold attends because a sleaze at work played by Greg Kinnear convinces him that this is a great place to meet vulnerable, easy women.) Unfortunately, Susan doesn’t want to have sex unless she is married. Harold’s primary objective is too important to be risked, so he plunges into marriage and quickly learns that the confusion of dealing with a woman only gets worse when the knot is tied.

Garry Shandling is superb in balancing the puzzlement and naiveté of an alien trying to get laid with the sweetness of a man learning to love with the open heart of a child. The initial directness of his approach transforms into delicious anxiety and confusion as he learns that woman (and men) rarely say what they mean and do what they say. In a touching and inspiring transformation, Howard begins to glean the exhilaration and the freedom of loving and sharing his emotions.

The clever writing in What Planet Are You From? is honest to the awkwardness of human pursuit of pleasure and the ultimate befuddlement of sex, which is often equally adept at dividing and uniting us. Amazingly, the movie covers an entire scope of male-female relationship, from courtship, through marriage, sex, pregnancy, and childbirth to the re-established balance of affection, communication, and passion in a long-term partnership.

What Planet Are You From? made us laugh hysterically while tickling our hearts with a touching romance. What a delightful reminder of the magic that emerges in relationships when two people have the strength and resolve to understand and, ultimately, incorporate sex as a part of learning to know and share their hearts.