Along Came Polly

Comedy, Romance

Jennifer Aniston	Polly Prince
Ben Stiller	Reuben Feffer
Hank Azaria	Claude
Alec Baldwin	Stan Indursky
Bryan Brown	Leland Van Lew
Debra Messing	Lisa Kramer
Philip Seymour Hoffman	Sandy Lyle
Jsu Garcia	Javier
Michele Lee	Vivian Feffer
Bob Dishy	Irving Feffer

Director	John Hamburg
Producer	Danny DeVito; Michael Shamberg; Anders Bard; Jane Bartelme
Writer	John Hamburg

Opposites are forced to attract in Along Came Polly, a dose of featherweight fluff that could've been better and could've been worse--surely no pairing of Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston can be a complete waste of time, right? Faint praise indeed, but fans of these mainstream funny-folk will enjoy this movie as a lazy-weekend distraction. Ben's a newlywed insurance risk-assessment analyst whose wife (Debra Messing, in a throwaway role) betrays him on their honeymoon. His uptight, play-it-safe lifestyle (which includes acute aversion to germs and irritable bowel syndrome) makes him seemingly incompatible with the spontaneous, free-spirited Polly (Aniston), but writer-director John Hamburg (whose writing credits include the previous Stiller hits Meet the Parents and Zoolander) is determined to give them at least the appearance of romantic potential. No such luck. You will, however, get a few laughs from supporting players Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bryan Brown, and Alec Baldwin. --Jeff Shannon