Genre: Romance, Comedy, Love, Marriage, Infidelity, Racy
Tagline: For the most cautious man on Earth, life is about to get interesting.
Plot: Reuben Feffer (BEN STILLER) has made a fine life—and a good career—out of playing it safe. The star risk assessor for a leading insurance firm, Reuben is an expert on minimizing danger—nothing ventured, nothing lost. Polly Prince (JENNIFER ANISTON) plays her life like a game of chance, taking joy from the serendipity that a rolling stone existence brings her. There’s always another opportunity—a new job, yet another apartment in another city—should this one not work out. No biggie…next. So when a chance meeting puts Reuben and Polly at the same party, the recently (and extremely) jilted Reuben decides that for once, chance may just be on his side. Dating Polly might be the answer to getting his life back on track—she’s attractive, fresh, funny—and after all, the two knew each other in seventh grade, when they were both delegates in the Model U.N. together. Just how much can a person change? Well, Polly probably didn’t have tattoos in junior high. Or have a penchant for spicy food, steamy salsa dancing or collecting tokens from boyfriends past…like the near-blind ferret she picked up in Italy. And Reuben—his propensity to plan everything in his life may not have been as all-encompassing in middle school, nor his compulsion with living in the middle of the road as pronounced. But
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 Discussion forum for this movie
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 Usually, the problem with romantic comedies is that, although the "romantic" part of the equation works, the "comedy" aspect falls flat. With Along Came Polly, it's the other way around. The film has plenty of funny moments, but there's no chemistry between stars Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston.  -- (ReelViews)
Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston have absolutely no chemistry in this romantic comedy about an uptight germophobe who falls for a peasant-blouse-wearing ditz.-- (Salon)
It's hard for a comedy to go too far wrong when it devotes much of its running time to humiliating Ben Stiller--though "Along Came Polly" demonstrates that this proven shtick doesn't make for an automatic slam-dunk either. ...Even the appealing teaming of Stiller and Jennifer Aniston of TV's "Friends" can't raise the formulaic "Polly" above the level of the average "American Pie"-era gross-out fest. -- (ReelViews)
There isn't a lot in the movie that is funny. I did like Philip Seymour Hoffman as Sandy, Reuben's best friend; he's a former child star, now reduced to having strangers tell him how amazed they are that he's still alive. How he responds to this in one early scene is a small masterpiece of facial melodrama, but how many times does he have to slip and fall on slick floors before we get tired of it?-- (Chicago Sun-Times)
A predictable though occasionally amusing vehicle for Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston.--Kirk Honeycutt (Hollywod Reporter)
The poop-joke laden Along Came Polly is an amusing diversion, but it's the same old s***.  --Leigh Johnson (Hollywood.com)
But ''Along Came Polly'' can't transcend its central miscasting. It will take a better film than this one to make Ms. Aniston a full-blown movie star.--Stephen Holden (The New York Times)
Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston have absolutely no chemistry in this romantic comedy about an uptight germophobe who falls for a peasant-blouse-wearing ditz.--Charles Taylor (Salon)
"Along Came Polly" is a connect-the-dots comedy that falls into the same trap of so many movies. It leans on bathroom or sex humor for easy laughs.--Ron Weiskind (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
While the movie as a whole is more interesting than at first glance, it suffers from trying to reach too wide an audience. 6/10--Avril Carruthers (Movie-Vault.com)
There are worse movies than Along Came Polly; some bad romantic comedies don’t have Stiller, Hoffman, or Azaria at all. But when the Ben Stiller filmography includes movies as richly funny as Zero Effect, Mystery Men, and The Royal Tenenbaums, this one just feels like a bad date.  --Jesse Hassenger (FilmCritic.com)
A perfectly executed romantic comedy that succeeds from fart to finish.  --Derek May (MovieWeb)
The few things that are funny, are very very funny. But the rest is, well, remember Zoolander?  --Brian Gallagher (MovieWeb)
It looks like Universal Studios had their script doctors work on this one, but clearly nobody could come up with the right prescription. 63/100--Brian Webster (Apollo Guide)
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| Cast |
Ben Stiller
There's Something About Mary, The Royal Tenenbaums, Meet the Parents |
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 | Debra Messing
The Mothman Prophecies, A Walk in the Clouds, The Wedding Date |
 | Alec Baldwin
Pearl Harbor, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Aviator |
 | Hank Azaria
Heat, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Pretty Woman |
 | Bryan Brown
Cocktail, F/X, Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey |
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Average comedy that delivers a series of funny set-pieces but doesn’t quite come together, despite the best efforts of an excellent cast.  --Matthew Turner (ViewLondon)
"Along Came Polly" recycles gags from various, more successful gross-out and romantic comedies, but without any zest or imagination. --Jonathan Foreman (New York Post)
Unfortunately, there's nothing remotely "risky" about 'Along Came Polly'. It's a rom-com by numbers and, to that end, does contain a semi-reasonable number of laughs - but it's also completely bereft of either spark or originality. 5/10--Gary Panton (Movie Gazette)
Its slender romance is uninspired, and the movie doesn't deliver in one of the big ways in which it attempts to deliver: as an emotional comedy. But it's funny, and funny covers a lot of sins.--Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle)
Everyone in "Along Came Polly" is funny except its leading man, Ben Stiller. Appearing in nearly every scene opposite much funnier performers, he's like that annoying kid who repeats everything the class clown says in the hopes of milking some residual laughs.--Jeffrey M. Anderson (San Francisco Examiner)
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