Stiller and Aniston don't break new ground in 'Along Came Polly'

Friday, January 16, 2004

By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Along Came Polly" is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Oh, wait. Ben Stiller underwent that indignity on Sunday's "Curb Your Enthusiasm," when Larry David had a mishap with a chicken skewer at Stiller's belated birthday party.

	'ALONG CAME POLLY' Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, language, crude humor and some drug references (two men are also shown nude from behind). Starring: Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston. Director: John Hamburg.

In the romantic comedy opening today, Stiller is cuckolded on his honeymoon, suffers noisy and embarrassing intestinal distress (he has irritable bowel syndrome and boy, does it get irritated), finds his face pressed directly into the sweaty, hairy chest of a basketball opponent and tries to dance at a salsa club where his date is the belle of the hot-blooded ball.

As "Along Came Polly" opens, all is going well and according to plan for Reuben Feffer (Stiller), a risk assessor for an insurance firm. He and Lisa (Debra Messing), his girlfriend of four years, marry and head for their honeymoon in St. Bart's.

They're lounging on the beach when they're approached by a naked Frenchman (Hank Azaria, in his best lothario accent) about taking scuba lessons. Reuben defers but Lisa goes ahead; but when Reuben goes to pick her up, he finds that the instructor has already done that.

He returns, alone and humiliated, to New York. His best friend, Sandy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), drags him to a party where he meets a grade-school classmate named Polly (Jennifer Aniston). They begin to date, despite their vastly different approaches to life -- he calculates and avoids risk, she embraces it -- housekeeping styles and favorite foods, among other things.

"Along Came Polly" is a connect-the-dots comedy that falls into the same trap of so many movies. It leans on bathroom or sex humor for easy laughs. Do we really need a waitress friend of Polly's making suggestive gestures with a baguette? I will admit, however, that a lecture about the sanitary aspects of a dish of mixed nuts in a bar makes an excellent point that could be applied to a communal candy dish in the workplace.

Stiller has perfected and exhausted this hapless bachelor act, while Polly is a few notches ditzier than Aniston's character on "Friends" although she gets a sympathetic back story. The funniest, freshest parts of the movie involve Sandy, star of a long-ago hit movie who is trying for a comeback in community theater. He makes eating pizza, playing basketball and rehearsing for "Jesus Christ Superstar" something to behold. Bryan Brown does the same as a risk-taking Aussie and Alec Baldwin, as Reuben's boss, is turning into the go-to guy for supporting roles.

John Hamburg, who co-wrote "Meet the Parents" and "Zoolander" also featuring Stiller, scripted and directed "Along Came Polly." If his stats were entered into the "Riskmaster" computer program shown in the movie, he likely would come up a winner. Whether that means "Polly" is very original or a welcome cure for the winter blahs is another equation all together.

E-mail this story   Print this story