Doin’ Time on Planet Earth 1988

Comedy

Box Office

$30K

Runtime

85 mins

Language

English

Made by

The Cannon Group

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Doin’ Time on Planet Earth Plot Summary

Read the complete plot summary and ending explained for Doin’ Time on Planet Earth (1988). From turning points to emotional moments, uncover what really happened and why it matters.

The film focuses on Ryan Richmond, an intelligent teenage boy who lives in his family’s Holiday Inn in Arizona. Ryan is an outcast amongst his peers and family, to the point where he only has a single friend. His intelligence wins him the ability to study abroad, however Ryan’s parents are more interested in the wedding for their eldest son Jeff, who is engaged to the daughter of a politician. Not wanting to attend alone, Ryan asks Lisa, a lounge singer who works at the hotel bar, but she refuses due to a large age gap and lifestyle differences. Ryan then turns to a computer dating service, only for the questions to become stranger and stranger until it tells him that he is an alien.

Soon after Ryan is approached by Charles and Virginia, who inform him that they are also aliens and that they created the dating service as a way to find others like them. They further state that Ryan is their leader, that the coordinates to their home planet is locked inside of his brain and can be unlocked via a sexual encounter, and that his father’s rotating lounge is actually a spaceship in disguise that they will use to return to their planet. Ryan is dismissive of their claims but later wonders if they are telling the truth when he realizes that he does have some of the abilities they list as unique to their alien species, such as the ability to inhale helium without any side effects.

Ryan decides to try and unlock the coordinates and convinces a reluctant Lisa to give him a blow-job. This seemingly gives him the coordinates: B52. Charles and Virginia decide that the time to leave is the upcoming blue moon, which coincides with Jeff’s wedding. Ryan is initially eager to leave with them, but decides against leaving after Lisa requites his affections. The “aliens” crash the wedding reception at the lounge at the same time his father manages to successfully get the lounge rotating. Charles and Virginia begin to eagerly count down to takeoff, only for their plans to get foiled when an emergency brake Ryan’s father installed is enabled. Charles, Virginia, and their followers flee into the desert, with a new plan to investigate the Taj Mahal, leaving it unanswered if they were actually aliens or if they were just delusional.

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Doin’ Time on Planet Earth Spoiler-Free Summary

Discover the spoiler-free summary of Doin’ Time on Planet Earth (1988). Get a concise overview without any spoilers.

In the arid sprawl of Sunnyvale, Arizona—self‑styled the world’s prune capital—Ryan Richmond inhabits the bustling corridors of his family’s Holiday Inn like a resident alien in a human world. The inn’s constant flow of travelers, half‑served breakfasts, and rotating lounge bar lend the town a perpetual sense of motion that mirrors Ryan’s own restless imagination. Surrounded by the clatter of luggage carts and the scent of baked fruit, he drifts between the anonymity of hotel life and the yearning for something far larger than the desert sky.

Ryan longs to trade the neon‑lit lobby for the distant halls of a Saudi Arabian university, a dream that feels both exhilarating and out of reach. His only confidant, the exuberant yet slightly obsessive Dan, provides comic relief and a sounding board for half‑formed schemes, while the sultry lounge singer Lisa Winston haunts his thoughts with a mix of admiration and unattainable allure. When a quirky computer‑dating service begins to ask questions that bend reality—suggesting that Ryan might be something other than human—the ordinary margins of his life start to fray, hinting at hidden depths beneath his teenage angst.

The arrival of the enigmatic pair, Charles and Virginia, adds a deliciously absurd twist to the mix. Claiming to have engineered the eccentric dating algorithm in search of their own kind, they present Ryan with the tantalizing possibility that he is an alien prince destined to guide a lost species home. Their cryptic promises, coupled with the inn’s bizarre rotating lounge that conceals more than just a view, infuse the narrative with a playful blend of sci‑fi intrigue and off‑beat comedy. As the sun sets over the desert dunes, the stage is set for a story that balances teenage longing, outlandish speculation, and the quirky charm of a world that never quite takes itself seriously.

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