Along Came Polly film review

certificate_12A

ALONG CAME POLLY

For someone best known for playing clumsy nerds, Ben Stiller sure manages to land some delectable screen partners. In the romantic comedy Along Came Polly he finds himself torn between Jennifer Anniston and Debra Messing. That itself is enough to indicate how much liberty with realism Polly is prepared to take in the pursuit of humour, though such license is granted willingly when the results are as amusing as this.

Though Stiller's bumbling portrayal of an anally uptight insurance risk assessor warrants a smile, it's the more outlandish supporting turns of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin and Hank Azaria that provide the biggest laughs. If Stiller's character has more than a hint of familiarity it's hardly surprising given the role was created by John Hamburg, the writer of Meet The Parents. Hamburg, who also directed Along Came Polly, obviously has a penchant for silly names. Following his stint as Gaylord Focker in Parents, here Stiller finds himself labeled with the almost equally daft moniker of Reuben Feffer.

Feffer's name is only one of his problems. Another is his obsessive awareness of the risks posed by life at every turn. It's an ability that on the upside has taken him to the forefront of a career as an insurance risk assessor, but has also made him cripplingly unadventurous. It explains why his wife Lisa (Debra Messing) leaves him on their honeymoon to have a fling with the seductive French scuba diver Claude (a gloriously flamboyant Hank Azaria).

Returning to New York to pick up the pieces of his life, Reuben is hindered rather than helped by his best friend Sandy Lyle (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a child acting star who bitterly lives off his past glory. When he bumps into old schoolmate Polly Prince (Jennifer Aniston), a free spirit who never met a risk she didn't want to take, Reuben sees a second chance at love and a first at a more intrepid life.

A gifted comedienne, Aniston, as she was in Bruce Almighty, is reduced to making her character a set up for the jokes. In this she's provided with a blind ferret. While she plays Polly relatively straight, Seymour Hoffman, Azaria, Baldwin as Reuben's coarse boss, and Bryan Brown as a danger-seeking tycoon go hilariously over the top.