Along Came Polly (2004)
Directed by John Hamburg
Written by John Hamburg
Starring Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Debra Messing, Hank Azaria
Release Date January 16th, 2004
Published January 15th, 2004
2004 is shaping up to be a big year for Ben Stiller. He has 3 films coming out in just the first five months of the year and is directing another. With Starsky and Hutch due in March, his much delayed teaming with Jack Black in Envy pushed to early Spring and a just-begun multi-episode stint on Larry David's HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Stiller is going to be everywhere this year. His first film of the year, the romantic comedy Along Came Polly with Jennifer Aniston, gets 2004 off to a good start.
In Along Came Polly, Stiller is Rueben Feffer, an expert in risk management. Ruben's job as a risk evaluator for an insurance company has taught him to be quite cautious in everything he does. Cautious even in his personal life which has caused him to settle down with Lisa (Debra Messing) for what seems like a safe, life-long commitment. However, on their honeymoon in St Barts, the couple meets a French scuba diving instructor named Claude (Hank Azaria in a stellar cameo). Of course, Claude and Lisa end up in bed together, discovered by Rueben while doing it with their scuba gear still on. No one does this kind of indignity quite as well as Stiller, who is to humiliation what Jack Benny was to being a tightwad.
Returning home, Rueben is consoled by his friend and former child star Sandy (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who tries to raise his spirits by taking him to a party. At the party Rueben runs into Polly Prince (Jennifer Aniston), a girl he went to junior high with and who now works as a cocktail waitress in between flights of fancy that have taken her all over the world.
Rueben and Polly are totally opposite personalities, Rueben is uptight, neurotic and fearful while Polly is adventurous, carefree and owns a ferret as a pet. However, like any man who sees an opportunity to be with a beautiful woman, Rueben puts aside his fears of spicy food, salsa dancing and ferrets. Of course, all of which leads to numerous comic foul-ups where his fears get the best of him.
Once again, Stiller's talent for taking the worst that life can give him makes these varying humiliations terrifically funny. Even the awful bathroom scene after Rueben has suffered through dinner at an Indian restaurant and the spicy food has caused his irritable bowel syndrome to act up. Ugh!
The problem with Stiller's performance in Along Came Polly, as funny as he is, is that we have seen him do variations on this same character plenty of times. Rueben is essentially just an extension of the character he played in last years Duplex who was an extension of Greg Fokker in Meet The Parents (Not so coincidentally, Parents and Along Came Polly are both written and directed by John Hamburg). Further still, those roles were basically toned down takes on Stiller's role in There's Something About Mary. Stiller's act is still funny in Along Came Polly but it is growing a little too familiar and tiresome.
As for Jennifer Aniston, she once again shows why she is the Friend most likely to breakout as a bigtime film star. She's got it, acting chops and comic timing. Her role is surprisingly small as the film makes room for a number of supporting characters. Her Polly has little interaction with the supporting characters which makes her feel as if she were in a slightly different film. Unlike Cameron Diaz in the very similar There's Something About Mary, Aniston's Polly is played straight, above all of the humiliating gross out gags. Polly is central to the plot but is outside much of the humor of the film.
The best parts of the film are the supporting roles played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin and Hank Azaria. These three terrific actors are in place to put Stiller in the most humiliating situations possible and they do their jobs well. Azaria is especially funny in his small role. Carrying his best accent since his gay Puerto Rican is The Birdcage, Azaria walks nude on the beach, murders the English language and as he should puts Stiller's Rueben in the most humiliating situations possible.
The supporting players, as good as they are, do however expose one of the films main flaws. Writer-Director John Hamburg can't decide on a comic tone. The script attempts to combine over-the-top slapstick, gross-out humor with a realistic romance. The over-the-top elements pull you out of the realistic story, rendering it less believable, especially at the end when the film wants you to get emotional about whether the romance will have a happy ending.
It's difficult to criticize a film that is as funny as Along Came Polly. The cast is terrific and there are a number of funny gags. Still, the romance never feels real because, as written, it gets stepped on by the slapsticky, gross-out humor. Thus we are left with a series of comic skits tied together loosely by a romance that is only in place to give the jokes context. I can kind of recommend Along Came Polly but with a slight reservations.
