NEW! Movies e-mail A weekly e-mail featuring the latest news, reviews and trailers. Sign up!

Movie Review
Talented cast wasted on carelessly constructed 'Polly'

By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

	TRACY BENNETT / UNIVERSAL STUDIOS Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller play a free-spirited woman and an uptight man who are romantically mismatched in "Along Came Polly."
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

Is it too late to make a New Year's wish? Here's mine for 2004: Can we please have a romantic comedy that doesn't include toilet scenes? Take "Along Came Polly" as an example. (Please, take it.) Let's see a show of hands: Who wants to see — and hear — Ben Stiller on the toilet, dealing with irritable bowel syndrome, insufficient toilet paper and a curious ferret? Anyone? Well, I've seen it, and numerous scenes of Jennifer Aniston in sleeveless tops (What's the matter, doesn't she ever get cold? Does her contract stipulate a certain amount of arm exposure?) can't quite erase it.

"Polly" is a romantic/gross-out comedy, and the two genres coexist awkwardly. With its cast of thirtysomething stars, the movie seems aimed at a date crowd that's slightly too old to find the word "bowel" hilarious. Then again, maybe some couples enjoy cozily munching popcorn while hearing Philip Seymour Hoffman discuss what he's done in his pants. Far be it from me to deny employment to all those talented Foley artists who know how to make poop sounds, but this is getting quite out of hand.

Digestive-tract humor aside, "Polly" is a waste of a talented cast. The likable Stiller, doing yet another variant of his worried/uptight/humiliated guy shtick, plays Reuben, an insurance man who specializes in risk assessment. He's ultra-careful in his personal life, too — but not careful enough, as his bride Lisa (Debra Messing) leaves him for a scuba instructor on their honeymoon. Back at home in New York, Reuben mopes around, commiserating with his best friend, Sandy (Hoffman).

Then ... you guessed it, along comes Polly (Aniston), a free-spirited flake with a messy apartment and a commitment problem.

Movie review Showtimes and trailer *½ "Along Came Polly," with Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Debra Messing, Hank Azaria, Bryan Brown, Alec Baldwin. Written and directed by John Hamburg. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 for sexual content, language, crude humor and some drug references. Several theaters.

The two have no chemistry and nothing whatsoever in common, so of course they embark on a romance, which is complicated by the return of Lisa, Reuben's habit of evaluating personal relationships as if they were potential insurance policies, and that ferret, who's blind and keeps bumping into things.

Aniston's usually a charmer onscreen, but here her trademark warmth seems muted, perhaps because writer/director John Hamburg's screenplay has given her nothing to play except a kind of Goldie Hawn-ish flakiness.

Her usual light delivery has been tamped down into a flat monotone, full of "ohmygods" and ditzy meanderings, sometimes seeming closer to mental illness than screwball charm. (Example: Polly calls Reuben and says she'd like to have dinner tomorrow night. He says, fine. She says, OK, but she'll have to check her calendar and see if she can make it, then she hangs up. Um, what? It makes no sense for her to behave that way — and, worse, it's not funny.)

Hoffman, in a big, sweaty, raspy performance, easily steals the movie: Sandy is a former teen-movie star now reduced to appearing in a community-theater production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Hamburg sets us up for an irresistible scene — Sandy, whose ego is even larger than his vast belly, picks a fight with the guy playing Jesus and announces that he'll play both Jesus and Judas — and then doesn't give it to us.

The movie wanders back to Reuben and Polly and their implausible romance, in which Reuben's digestive problems seem to have mysteriously disappeared. The power of love? No, the power of thoughtless screenwriting. This cast — and the audience — deserve better.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company