Along Came Polly
Tags: bleak, comedy, entertaining, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
Reuben Feffer (Ben Stiller), a life insurance underwriter, is celebrating his honeymoon with newlywed wife, Lisa Kramer (Debra Messing), on the island of St. Barts, but catches her having sex with Claude (Hank Azaria), a French scuba instructor. Returning home to New York alone, he attempts to piece his life back together. Reuben goes to an art gallery with his friend, Sandy Lyle (Philip Seymour Hoffman), where he runs into former junior high school classmate Polly Prince (Jennifer Aniston).
Reuben and Polly begin dating, with her introducing him to activities he once wrote off as "too risky", such as eating at a Moroccan restaurant and salsa dancing, which culminates with the pair enthusiastically having sex together, with Reuben shouting "50" as he orgasms. The contrast between their two personalities is a source of comedy throughout the film until Lisa returns and tells him she wants to reconcile their relationship. Meanwhile, Sandy, a self-centered, former teen idol, is trying to make a comeback by having a documentary filmed about his starring role as Judas in an amateur production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Reuben is torn between the free-spirited Polly and the safe and familiar Lisa. To solve this issue, he enters information about Polly and Lisa into a computer insurance program which measures risk. The computer tells him that, despite his numerous blunders with her, Polly is the best choice for him. Polly joins Reuben on a sailing trip where he is to inspect Leland Van Lew (Bryan Brown), a high-risk client, but she is offended when she sees his risk analysis of her. She rejects his proposal to move in together, telling him that he would be better off going back to Lisa.
Back home, Reuben tries talking to Polly, but to no avail. He eventually invites Lisa to Sandy's opening show, where he learns that Polly is leaving New York for Cincinnati in a few hours. After a speech given by his father, Irving (Bob Dishy), to Sandy about not living in the past, Reuben realizes he wants to be with Polly and not Lisa, and he rushes to her apartment to stop her from leaving. Polly is not convinced she should stay with him, so Reuben eats food off the ground to prove he is capable of taking risks.
Reuben and Polly vacation on the same beach where Lisa and he had their honeymoon. Reuben again encounters Claude, but instead of being angry, he thanks Claude before heading into the water with Polly to join Van Lew on his new boat.

Review: I can imagine that if you are easily offended by fart ( or "shart") jokes or the shiny hiney's of Ben Stiller or Hank Azaria, you may not like this movie.
The characters were all so much fun- the kind of creepy boss, the obnoxious but extremely lovable best friend, the risk expert who finds something to worry about in any situation, the goofy, scatterbrained ferret- owning waitress/creepy children's book author, the australian who likes to free fall off of tall buildings, the priceless scuba instructor, and the very cute salsa dancer.
And Alec Baldwin steals every scene in which he appears (would love to see him do more comedy).I am not easily offended by bathroom humor  quite the opposite, I think it's funny when pulled off right.
The other Ben & Jen. ALONG CAME POLLY (2004) *** Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Debra Messing, Bryan Brown, Hank Azaria, Michele Lee, Bob Dishy, Alec Baldwin, Missi Pyle.
Stiller gives another of his patented hapless schmuck romantics turns as newlywed risk management assessor whose marriage is on the rocks when his wife (Messing) has an affair on their honeymoon, sending him back to NYC to assess his life and runs into former junior high friend Aniston who knocks him for a loop despite her flaky demeanor.
Frequently funny and evenly paced by writer and first-time director John Hamburg the laughs come often and no thanks to Hoffman as Stiller's sloven has-been actor buddy and Baldwin as his vulgar boss.
Yet, this sadly doesn't hold a candle to 'Something About Mary', which may have been his best movie of his career.We begin the film, seeing Reuben (Stiller) marrying Lisa (Messing).
It is funny, and it's not a bad film at all, it's clever and cute, it's just that it does tend to lose flavor each time you see it.Aniston and Stiller were equally good in this, and I still recommend it.
A one time watch, or just once every so often is good enough.Reuben Feffer (Ben Stiller) analyses risk for a living and is an extremely cautious man, with an extremely cautious life.
Who will it be, the free-spirited Polly, or Lisa, with whom Reuben shares a lot in common?I thought this movie was very cute and I liked the ferret :).
Aniston is great as Polly and with the addition of Stiller, the two become a great duo, feeding off of each other's energy.This movie is a great date flick and is even a good film to just pop in once and a while.
The film belongs to the demential genre, it's a comedy like "There's something about Mary" -actually there's the same actor, and the same screenwriter of recent Ben Stiller movies as well.We laugh sometimes, but (as it often happens) we see that the most comical moments were in the trailer!
Ben Stiller always does the same character -the Jewish young man, awkward and jinxed-, with a beauty to court (this time is Jennifer Aniston).Everything here is predictable, nothing surprises us.
Reuben Feffer {Ben Stiller} is looking for a new relationship after walking in on his wife {Debra Messing} with a scuba diving instructor {Hank Azaria}.
Ben Stiller plays a "Risk analyst" (and he is the most cautious man on earth, quote: "you don't eat mixed nuts on a bar everybody knows that" and "I don't take the subway home because you a 1 to 45000 risk to get into a serious accident") and the first day of his honeymoon his wife cheats on him...And along came Polly, an old friend from school.
Jennifer Aniston as Polly Prince Ben Stiller as Reuben Feffer10/10 Grrrrrrrrrreat movie.
Ben Stiller and Jennifer Anniston play a couple who are opposites- and yet they are attracted to each other.If that  plot line doesn't take you by surprise and thrill you, the movie won't either.Lots of sight gags and fart jokes.
And Hank Azaria and Phillip Seymore Hoffman must have got paid a great deal of money to be in this kind of average ho-hum movie, I've come to expect more from them.What was interesting was that I saw this after I saw American Splendor, which is a truly funny and original movie- and I compared the two in my head, and found myself wishing that the movie executives would be forced to sit through those two movies back to back- perhaps that would knock some sense into them andthey'd start making better movies with unknowns rather than this formulaic stuff that plays best on airplanes..
I may be the only person in the world who didn't think something about Mary (sorry--keyboard is broken and won't capitalize consistently) wasn't funny so I thought this movie was much better done, especially with the toilet humor.Excellent performance by Hank azaria (I didn't recognize him).a good movie to watch when it's too nasty to go outside.
Any fan of Ben Stiller or Jennifer Aniston will most likely enjoy Along Came Polly.
Great plot, incredibly funny minor characters such as: the Great Hank Azaria (he's responsible for the voices of Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum and others on "the simpsons", by the way) in an absolutely unrecognizable body, playing the role of Claude, a French scooba instructor you'll love to meet.
A lot of Slapstick, a lot of seemingly "low" humor, but it's just SO funny seeing that slow motion shot of someone's hairy belly rubbing ALL over Ben Stiller's face during a basketball matchAlong Came Polly manages to be a real fun Comedy with a true sense of kindness, love, and humor.
I can't believe it that this film has such a low rate of 5.8 in IMDb, this movie deserves at least a rating of 7 stars.Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston are very good in here, and there is very good chemistry between them too.
If you take out the toilet jokes, and the two horrible main characters, and the sappy moral, and the dumb animal joke, you end up with a few great supporting characters: Hank Azaria, Alec Baldwin, and Missi Pyle could have made a better movie with just their characters.But the thing that makes this worth watching is Phil Hoffman.
It means we see his energetic projection.The character he plays is one of those folded ones: an actor playing an actor whose role in the story is in a play, and in a reality TeeVee show of himself, and finally as "proxy" for Ben Stiller while Stiller is off doing the formula date movie ending.Watch this just for Hoffman.
I realize several Ben Stiller movies are out or will be out this year, but perhaps he should insist on quality, not quantity.I was dumbfounded at what the filmmakers thought passed for comedy in "Along Came Polly." Stiller's Reuben is grating, charmless and ranks as one of the worst performances of the year.
As long as she keeps making more movies such as "The Good Girl" (in which she's terrific) and less like "Along Came Polly," she'll have a career of which she could be proud.Aniston tries desperately to overcome the limp material with which she's working, but it's a daunting task for any actress.
With the exception of a few moments with Alec Baldwin, as Reuben's boss Stan, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Reuben's best friend Sandy, there's nothing funny in this awful film.
So overall I felt the potential gain outweighed the potential risk, which oddly enough ties into the theme of the film.Stiller plays Reuben Feffer, a guy whose wife (Debra Messing, yuck) cheats on him during their honeymoon and who ends up bumping into a girl he liked when younger, Polly Prince (Aniston).
His friend Sandy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) tries to cheer him up and takes him to the party where old schoolmate Polly (Jennifer Aniston) erm...
One poor part of the movie I thought though was that Jennifer Aniston's character (Polly) didn't seem to be able to make up her mind about what she wanted.
I thought if she'd known what she'd wanted from the start (even if she didn't show it to Ben Stiller's character, just us) it would have made it a lot easier to focus on the actual comedy of the movie..
Torturing Ben Stiller can only be so funny for so long - in this flick, he shares the company of a ferret, rubs up face first against a sweaty, hairy guy, and befriends an intolerable Philip Seymour Hoffman (Every time I hear the word "sharted," I want to revoke the Oscar he won for Capote and brain him with it).
While in his honeymoon in a paradisaical beach, the conservative risk analyst of an insurance company Reuben Feffer (Ben Stiller) finds his wife Lisa Kramer (Debra Messing) having intercourse with her scuba instructor Claude (Hank Azaria) in his boat.
When Lisa returns, Reuben has to decide if he wants to live his life in the suburb with his unfaithful wife, or have a risky relationship with Polly."Along Came Polly" is a good entertainment, where the beauty of Jennifer Aniston shines.
I like Philip Seymour Hoffman very much, he has a good performance in this film, but indeed the character of Sandy Lyle seems to be tailored for Jack Black.
Ben Stiller is the WORST actor in the whole world, as always.Jennifer Aniston or Debra Messing may be cool actress, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is great but, c'mon, what the hell are they doing here?
As for the actors...Ben Stiller shows why he's worthy of a Razzie award...Philip Seymour Hoffman, a wonderful actor, is uncharacteristically unlikable...Jenifer Aniston's OK, in a wooden, sleepwalky kind of way...Hank Azaria does a good job in a small part..& is nicely silly.
Even the farting noises are irritating.)The movie tries to preach to us that we all should live our lives like Polly: careless and without worry, because as one character says in the stereotypical Big Inspirational Speech of the film, we only live our miserable lives once, and why make it completely miserable instead of looking for the good in things?
"Along Came Polly" isn't really all that funny, with lots of bodily humor and silly juvenile jokes, not to mention a rather disappointingly contrived performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman who tries (to no avail) to make his character realistic.
The characters played by Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston are so thinly drawn that they don't even seem like real people, just markers being nudged down an extremely familiar path by a screenplay that exists in a dimension BEYOND cliche.
Stiller plays Reuben Feffer, who is pretty much the exact same character he always plays in movies like this, and Aniston's Polly is such a ghost of a character that she only has one personality trait that I could pick out.
Philip Seymour Hoffman supplies a good number of laughs (pretty much the only ones in the movie) as Reuben's lecherous best friend Sandy, a former child star who is oblivious to his own foolishness.
Funny guy Ben Stiller plays Reuben Feffer a hard working insurance adjuster who's just recently married his elegant and attractive sweetheart Lisa(Debra Messing)and upon their honeymoon Reuben finds out that he's been cheated on right away!
This is at least the third film in which I've seen Ben Stiller on a toilet, and twice now that I've seen Philip Seymour Hoffman complain in movie about his bowel movements, or lack thereof.
Situations like this have been filmed before, viewed from the perspective of either sex, so if you're going to tread in these oft-visited waters, you really do need a fresh concept.Stiller plays a neurotic, insurance risk assessment specialist and Jennifer Aniston is the playful Polly.
Same Old Same Old. How many times can you watch a Stiller / Aniston comedy with the same weak plot over and over again until you finally lost feeling in your legs and start to wonder how movies like this get made?
Starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston at around both of their career peaks, this film doesn't offer much of anything special or different than other romantic comedies.
Ben Stiller is a likable enough comedic performer and Jennifer Aniston was at the height of her 'Friends' fame when this romantic comedy was made.It's a decent enough film, with some big laughs, but it never seems to know what sort of film it wants to be, and ventures from heart-warming to lewd with alarming ease.As a step away from her 'Rachel' persona, Aniston chose well, but her character is so two dimensional and at times annoying, that I could never really like her.If anything it is a film stolen by the supporting cast, with Hank Azaria and the much missed Phillip Seymour Hoffman stealing every scene they're in.Pitched as a dream pairing of Stiller and Aniston, if anything it instead just reminds us of the good work both have done elsewhere..
You know it kind of feels like Ben Stiller movies rolled into one here, a bit too much crude humour on that but still it does seem like that at times, nothing original here and a film that doesn't really bring positivity to the party.Now Ben Stiller as the main character Reuben is OK and Jennifer Aniston as Polly is the same, the problem is they don't gel and that is the key here to why this isn't a good show from the creators.
I did like the supporting cast, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Sandy is funny at moments and Alec Baldwin chips in too acting wise, but in all honesty because the main two's chemistry doesn't work, it kind of ruins it for all.Now John Hamburg writes and directs this and does it in a way as I said before, like every other Ben Stiller ever made.
The main actors actually do make this slightly better, they can be relied on to be consistent here but maybe that is the problem, drawing people to watch it only because of the big names.It is basically Rom-com gone bad and one that for me is unforgivable given that Hamburg and Stiller can and have made good films like this before, but both (but more Hamburg), fail at this one.
Creator John Hamburg takes two likely comedy protagonists -- a risk-assessing neurotic type (Ben Stiller) and the free-spirited unpredictable type (Jennifer Aniston) who come together after Stiller's character's wife cheats on their honeymoon -- and puts them in outrageous situations and dealing with strange characters to amp up the humor.
It all happens quite naturally.By the end, "Polly" is no longer the commitment phobe she was at the beginning of the film, while Stiller's character has learned that life is not about achieving "milestones" and to take things slowly.We feel good about their prospects...definitely a Happy, Feel-Good Movie.One leaves the theater feeling satisfied.
Along Came Polly (2004, Dir. John Hamburg) Reuben Feffer (Stiller) thinks he's found the love of his life, but on his honeymoon, he unfortunately discovers her cheating on him with a scuba instructor (Azaria).
But it's not going to be easy for Reuben, especially when he spends his days calculating risks, and when someone unexpected turns up.'Along Came Polly' is another on of Ben Stiller's comedies.
ALONG CAME POLLY is an entertaining romantic comedy filled with laughs starring Ben Stiller as Rueben Pfeffer, a tightly wound insurance agent, whose bride cheats on him on his honeymoon and upon returning home, embarks on a romance with a free-spirited girl (Jennifer Aniston) who he knew in junior high school.
This is your average romantic comedy with several gag jokes that Ben Stiller is famous for in his movies.
This film is amusing and worth watching, in spite of two very obvious and significant shortcomings: (1) it stars Ben Stiller playing a character almost - exactly - like - every - other - character - he - has - ever - played - on - television - or - on - film; and (2) it co-stars Jennifer Anniston playing a character almost - exactly - like - every - other - character - she - has - ever - played - on - television - or - on - film.That it is worth watching is high testimony as to the likableness both of these actors convey in all their roles and by their personalities both on- and off-screen.Philip Hoffman is often hilarious as the (also likable) pompous and nerdy, combined (no small feat for an actor) small-time actor in the plot - one who knows-it-all and knows little at the same time.Hank Azaria adds to any production in which he appears, as do Debra Messing, Byran Brown and Alec Baldwin.
Along Came Polly is a comedy featuring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston, as two former high school classmates, who begin a new romance after a chance meeting years later.There are several scenes that I got a good laugh out of, like the overflowing toilet bit and the basketball er how shall I say, "mishap".
You know the movie that starred Ben Stiller and he was really funny in it?
I recommend this movie to all Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston fans, and to everyone who loves goofball and romantic comedies.
Few positives are that it did have a good moral of the story at then end of the movie, and I felt Jennifer Aniston portrayed her character Polly well.For comedy movie fans, I wouldn't recommend watching this movie as there isn't enough funny moments and the plot is not that good..
The movie works because you care about Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston.
Ben Stiller is funny in this movie, but it is not his best work.
I believe the only thing worthwhile in the film is Jennifer Aniston, she looks so much more attractive and sexy than in Friends she made my mouth water....Ben Stiller plays Reuben, a complete insecure idiot with no character (or "cojones") that somehow is a "star" at the insurance company he works for (first contradiction).