This outwardly gentle fairy tale bears more venom than any horror film in its fluid exploration of what television has to teach us-and what happens when we learn it. Peter Sellers's Chance the Gardener is an E.T.-like creature who has absorbed all he knows from watching television. His universe is one with the television universe; the flow of his day follows the flow of programming, from morning kiddie shows to the evening news. Chance lives in a perfect simulation of The Box: he has literally never seen the world outside his front window. He is naive, but he is far from the “innocent” that the fairy tale would have us believe; television has made him in its own image. Let loose on the world, Chance is transparent and dumb, a receptacle for the banality of folks who, like himself, can no longer distinguish between the fullness of life and its media likeness. In the big castle of the rich lady (Shirley MacLaine) where chance leads him, this insubstantial man who “likes to watch” is taken for a seer, his shallow emanations for elliptical wisdom. Thus is the political career of “Chauncey Gardner” launched. The implication that the White House may evolve into Mr. Rogers's Neighborhood is almost too cynical to be believed. Almost.