Along Came Polly Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)February 21st, 2004
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
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Polly Prince (Jennifer Aniston, Bruce Almighty) is afraid of commitment because Daddy split when she was a kid. Reuben Feffer (Ben Stiller, Duplex) is afraid of...well, everything, thanks to an overbearing, domineering mother. The two were classmates in junior high two decades before their chance meeting at a Manhattan party.
The party comes just a few weeks after Reuben's wedding to Lisa Kramer (Debra Messing, Hollywood Ending), who proceeded to fuck a St. Bart's scuba instructor (Hank Azaria, Shattered Glass) on their honeymoon. Brokenhearted Reuben returned home to a lonely life, his job as a risk analyst for a smarmy insurance salesman (Alec Baldwin, The Cooler), and a best friend who could have been a finalist on Fox's My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cold Mountain). Is it any wonder he immediately falls for the free-spirited Polly?
If you've seen Along's trailer, you've seen the whole movie. Polly likes dangerous things (salsa dancing, ferrets, eating bar peanuts), while Reuben could tell you the odds of accidentally ingesting somebody else's shit. Reuben also has a Stiller-ian run of bad luck, which means Stiller is doing Stiller, just slightly more nebbishly than usual. And that makes Along an Annie Hall knockoff, only with diarrhea jokes. If Reuben started punching people (or walls) when things go wrong, this could be an Adam Sandler movie.
Typical romantic-comedy trappings, elevated slightly by leads who are more talented than most (and yes, I mean you, J.Lo). The best aspect of the film, however, is Hoffman, who steals every scene he's in (and, honestly, a few he isn't even in) as a washed-up, one-hit wonder of an actor who spends most of Along producing Jesus Christ Superstar at a community theater. It's a hammy performance, but it's truly the only thing anyone will ever remember from John Hamburg's film. Unless you have a thing for blind ferrets who run into walls, because, god knows, there's plenty of that in Along.
Hamburg, who penned screenplays for Stiller's Zoolander and Meet the Parents, does very little to make Along anything but a routine cinematic adventure, albeit one that involves Aniston's nipples poking through a number of outfits, and the bare asses of both Stiller and Azaria.
1:30 - PG-13 for sexual content, language, crude humor and some drug references
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