"Along Came Polly" is much better than it sounds, because it sounds awfully generic. An overly cautious, buttoned-down, germphobic
guy meets a carefree, spontaneous, flighty girl! Hilarity ensues! But the guy is Ben Stiller and the girl is Jennifer Aniston, and they know what they're doing. Stiller excels at playing hapless guys for whom everything goes wrong -- he's very much in "Meet the Parents" territory here -- and Aniston's sweet, friendly demeanor is loved by 20 million "Friends" watchers a week (of which I am not one, but that's my own fault, not hers). Stiller plays Reuben Feffer, a risk analyst for an insurance agency whose wife Lisa (Debra Messing) runs off with a nude Frenchman (Hank Azaria, unrecognizable) while on their honeymoon in the Caribbean. Reuben heads home to New York and, still reeling, bumps into Polly Prince (Aniston), an old schoolmate he hasn't seen since junior high. They hit it off, but her flakiness doesn't jibe with his system of carefully evaluating every potential risk before making a decision.
To read the rest of this review, click on the relevant link below.