Along Came Polly | AccessAtlanta

Along Came Polly

Risk-averse Reuben Feffer plans for life and love zoom wildly off track when his wife dumps him on their honeymoon for a scuba instructor.

FILM FACTS

Starring: Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Debra Messing, Hank Azaria
Director: John Hamburg
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, language, crude humor and some drug references.
Genre: Comedy

Official movie site

See showtimes (PG-13) 90 minutes

Grade: C+

Verdict: Stiller's still funny and Aniston's adorable, but together they're a long run for a short slide.

By MELINDA ENNIS
Cox News Service

Along with a few good laughs provided by some typical Ben Stiller shtick comes the fundamental problem with "Along Came Polly": Stiller and his co-star, Jennifer Aniston, donÕt click.

They are as incompatible a romantic pair on screen as they are in the film's unlikely premise: a risk assessor who, of course, falls for a risk taker. Their pairing is never believable and their chemistry never comes along to rescue the film from its flimsy foundation.

Stiller plays a role that he has branded, a semi-nerdy but lovable loser. In this case, heÕs risk assessment manager Reuben Feffer, who has been dumped by his wife (Debra Messing of "Will & Grace"). Adding to the indignity (and the audience's sympathy) is the fact that he is cuckolded on his honeymoon by a French scuba dude with major pecs, played improbably but impeccably by Hank Azaria ("The Birdcage"), who here employs a Kevin Kline-like Gallic accent.

Then, along comes Polly (Aniston), a free-spirited, discombobulated but dishy ditz who runs into Stiller when she is waitressing at a party he has been dragged to by his equally dippy friend Sandy (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

The always-watchable Hoffman plays a one-hit-wonder child star, still clinging to his faded fame. Here he takes on the loutish, grossly garrulous friend-to-the-hero role that John Candy perfected in the '80s. Sandy's attempts to reignite his star status with a community theater production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" allow Hoffman to play funny, but the script fails to leverage the full weight of the actor or the situation.

Less successful is Alec Baldwin, swiftly becoming the hardest working character actor in films. His turn as Stan Indursky, StillerÕs wheeler-dealer boss, is - strangely - both overplayed and underutilized.

Most of the other laughs come from the scatological humor that has become a fixture in Stiller's films, relying heavily on body functions and malfunctions. A nightmare first date involving Stiller's irritable bowel syndrome and Aniston's penchant for exotic foods culminates in an overflowing toilet stopped up by her grandmother's hand towel. Sophisticated no, but funny nonetheless to anyone who has inadvertently found themselves in a strange bathroom with an uncooperative commode.

Aniston is fine playing the flighty Polly but is stymied by a relationship with Stiller that never heats up and a plot that fizzles.

Screenwriter-director John Hamburg, who also co-wrote Stiller's more successful films "Meet the Parents" and the underrated "Zoolander," starts the movie with promising momentum that runs out of steam about the time the Stiller-Aniston romance is supposed to be creating some.

Still, hardcore Stiller fans will be content with a fix of his stock-in-trade clownish clumsiness, his eagerly earnest jerkiness and the quirky charisma that still makes him fun and funny to watch.