It's so refreshing to see Ben Stiller tackle the role of a frustrated Everyman who's easily flustered when confronted with potentially embarrassing situations. And thankfully, Jennifer Aniston has broken out of her Friends mold to play a free-spirited waitress who wins the love of a neurotic nerd. It's also great to see Jack Black as the vulgar, loud-mouthed sidekick in a romantic comedy, and to see the Farrelly brothers really change things up with a movie as full of gross-out humor as it is of heart.
OK, so that's a complete lie. Watching Along Came Polly is like watching 10 minutes of There's Something About Mary, followed by 10 minutes of High Fidelity, followed by 10 minutes of Friends; lather, rinse, repeat. It doesn't even actually involve Jack Black or the Farrelly brothers, but you may not realize that when exiting the theater. Writer-director John Hamburg has made a safe, boring crowd-pleaser that will probably appeal to the kind of people who like to see the same movie over and over again.
Stiller plays Greg Focker, er, Reuben Feffer, a risk-assessment analyst for an insurance company who runs his life like he does his job: calculating and minimizing chances. Thus, he's marrying bland real-estate agent Lisa (Debra Messing, the only person in this movie playing even remotely against type) and preparing himself for a life of picket fences and 2.5 kids in the suburbs. But—shock of shocks!—Lisa runs off with hunky, French, scuba-diving instructor Claude (Hank Azaria, with another silly accent and a disturbingly sculpted physique) on the couple's honeymoon, leaving poor Reuben alone with no other option but to hire Matt Dillon's private detective to track down his former childhood crush.
Wait, no, that's still a different movie. Actually, Reuben encounters free-spirited, former childhood acquaintance Rachel, er, Polly (Aniston) at a hip art opening he's been dragged to by his best friend, Sandy (Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Jack Black), a washed-up child actor who's more than a little full of himself. Sparks fly between Ross and Rachel, er, Reuben and Polly, through a series of humiliating Stillerian set pieces, including the irritable bowel syndrome-afflicted Reuben making a mess of Polly's bathroom and stepping on her feet while attempting to salsa. He even bonds with Rodolfo, Polly's crazy dog, er, blind ferret.
But when Lisa comes back into the picture, will Reuben choose his uncertain new life over his risk-free old one? Does a blind ferret shit on the carpet? That is to say, yes, yes, he will, and you darn well better like it because it's not like you're ending up with any other result. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't have fun on the way, but Hamburg (who co-wrote past Stiller vehicles Zoolander and the very similar Meet the Parents) doesn't do anything other than cobble together elements from other funnier movies, including Reuben's goombah boss (Alec Baldwin, as Robert De Niro) full of inappropriately intimate advice, and his latest client, an Aussie business exec (Bryan Brown, as Crocodile Dundee) with a penchant for base-jumping and swimming with sharks.
It'd be nice to see Stiller or Aniston try something new; both have done well in dramatic roles in indie flicks, or even in different kinds of comedic roles. Stiller, in particular, has done a string of weak, by-the-numbers comedies lately: First the already-forgotten Duplex, now this, and in April, Barry Levinson's Envy, with the actual Jack Black, already bumped back six months and gathering bad buzz. After giving such a great performance in The Good Girl, Aniston seems determined to craft her post-Friends movie career by playing slight variations on her sitcom staple—although it did bring her plenty of success in Bruce Almighty.
For all its redundancies, though, Polly will probably be like comfort food for many moviegoers, and time has proven that audiences never tire of fart jokes or Ben Stiller falling down. We can only hope that Stiller will eventually tire of it, pick himself up, and make a movie that's actually worthy of his talents.