Five government-funded think-tank scientists, actually conducting themselves more like gag writers for a TV variety show, set in motion a whopping practical joke whereby an assistant professor at Columbia University is brainwashed into believing himself an extraterrestrial and is passed off as such onto the gullible world. This poor patsy gets out of control, however, once he starts to think of himself as the New Messiah on a sacred mission to stamp out his petty pet peeves (television, elevator music, excessive facial hair, discourteous drivers), meanwhile standing up for the finer things of life ("What of Blake and Verlaine?"). Marshall Brickman, a frequent script collaborator on Woody Allen films and now on his own as a writer and director, although not clearly establishing a separate identity, appears to find it not at all dishonest to carry on about Quality of Life and the Culture Crunch in a movie made up predominantly of cheap, nervous, TV-paced gags (the scientists want a semen sample from the protagonist, he shakes his head no, they hand him a copy of Playboy, and he obligingly shuffles off to do the dirty work). With Alan Arkin, Austin Pendleton, and Madeline Kahn. (1980) — Duncan Shepherd
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