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Along Came Polly (Full Screen Edition)

Along Came Polly (Full Screen Edition)

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Okay comedy.
Review: I was thinking that it was going to be a lot funnier. However, I did get some laughs out of it and I was interested the entire time. It's probably best if you rent instead of buying it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: NOT FUNNY, AND BORING!
Review: If this is your type of movie, you'll love it!
I rank this movie with Anchorman, and Johnson
family vacation, they all sucked!
BEN STILLER, IS SUCH A DORK!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great...no..EXCELLENT!
Review: If u r lookin' 2 sit down and watch a great movie, this is it 4 all u romantic-comedy people. The writer and star of Meet the Parents reunite in this much tamer comedy about a risk-averse guy who meets a free spirit.

Reuben (Ben Stiller) evaluates risk for a living. When he marries Lisa (Debra Messing), he thinks he has a sure thing. But on the first day of their honeymoon she falls for a scuba instructor, and he returns home alone to an apartment filled with unopened wedding gifts.

He runs into Polly (Jennifer Anniston), a childhood friend, and he asks her out. Can a guy who spends eight minutes a day just putting away and taking out the decorative throw pillows for his bed find happiness with a non-planner, a risk-taker, an exotic-food-lover, and a key-loser?

More important, how many excrutiatingly embarrassing moments will we have to share with Reuben before we find out?

Oh yes, there are many, many (...)" moments ahead. Reuben's face collides with a hairy, sweaty torso. Polly drops a candy bar on the street, picks it up, plucks off a hair, and eats it. A man still standing at a urinal wipes his hand on Reuben's ear. On a first date, while trying to make a good impression, Reuben floods Polly's toilet by using her grandmother's embroidered hand-towel as toilet paper. Reuben is constantly struggling to hold in various bodily functions, from controlling his irritable bowel syndrome when he eats ethnic food to maintaining his sexual stamina when he becomes overexcited the first time he and Polly make love. And Polly's almost-blind ferret keeps slamming into walls. If all of this strikes you as funny, then you probably don't get out much and then this may be the movie for you when you do.

But you will still have to sit through a lot of dull filler subplots that waste the talents of the stars, including Reuben's self-centered and obnoxious childhood friend (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a has-been actor still clinging to his one sucessful appearance in a John Hughes-style teen movie, salsa lessons, and a client prospect (Bryan Brown) who likes to jump off buildings and swim with sharks. The characters are overly generic, especially Reuben's kvetching mother (Michelle Lee) and silent but deep father (Bob Dishy). Hank Azaria, newly Joe Piscopoed into a buff and muscular body that looks like a CGI effect, is wasted as a naked scuba instructor with a Pepe LePew accent. This movie has its flaws, but then again, one shouldn't over-evaluate a comedy because it is meant to bring joy, not problems. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: One of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Review: If you like toilet scenes and enjoy humor below waist, this is the movie for you.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as funny as I would have liked
Review: In "Along Came Polly," Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston try to show that opposites attract, but they fail to get that message across very well.

The first twenty minutes of this movie are hysterical. Poor Reuben (Stiller) is happily married to Lisa (played by Debra Messing) for less than twenty-four hours before she cheats on him. Alone again, Reuben runs into Polly Prince (Aniston), a girl he went to middle school with many years ago. Reuben is a very straight-arrow, predictable guy, and Polly is the complete opposite of him. Somehow, though, Reuben finds himself drawn to her, and eventually has to decide which woman poses the greatest risk to his heart: his unfaithful wife or crazy, unpredictable Polly.

This movie started out great (every time I think of the flipper sex scene, I start laughing). However, after the first half hour or so, it really fell apart. I wasn't crazy about the character of Polly and I had a very hard time finding her relationship with Reuben believable. These characters have absolutely nothing in common, and they never establish a connection that makes the audience believe that their relationship is worth fighting for. Also, there is some gross humor in the film that is downright unnecessary: how many bathroom scenes does any one film need?!

Overall, "Along Came Polly" was disappointing. Fans of Aniston and Stiller will probably manage a few laughs, but all this movie really amounts to is another comedy gone bad.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A very disappointing romantic comedy given the great cast
Review: It would be easy to say that "Along Came Polly" is yet another movie where pretty much all the good parts are in the trailer, but this film has more serious problems that account for it being one of the more disappointing romantic comedies to come along in a while. You look at the cast with Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Debra Messing, Alec Baldwin, and Hank Azaria and you have to have expectations of a decent film, but this 2004 comedy really falls short.

As you know from the trailer, Stiller's character is a risk-accessor named Reuben Feiffer who has problems with keeping clean in a sweat, germ infested world. Actually, the character is not as pathological as he appears in the trailer because he also has Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is a legitimate concern and a good reason not to eat spicy North African food. Aniston is Polly Prince, a free spirit, who went to middle school (or junior high) with Reuben way back when and when they meet again he decides that asking her out on a date would be just the thing to get him out of the dumps. You see, the movie opens with Reuben getting married to the girl of his dreams (and computer analysis), Lisa (Debra Messing) but the honeymoon hits a major speed bump within 48 hours.

This is certainly a good year for ferrets this year, relatively speaking, with the blind ferret in this film and the dead ferrets that Hermoine feeds to the hippogryph in the new Harry Potter movie. But at least the blind ferret has an excuse for the action of his character, which is something that is missing on Polly's part. We understand why Reuben likes Polly. She is cute and likes salsa dancing. But why Polly like Reuben is never really explained, although a friend thinks that pity is a principle component. There needs to be more going on besides being the stars of the picture to justify the romance and more than an ability to mentally count to fifty under the right circumstances. Reuben's big moment in which he surprises Polly is not going to provide retroactive justification for her interest.

Writer-director John Hamburg could fix things so that there was some reason for the relationship, but his primary objective in this film is to do things to Ben Stiller (who gets bonus points along with Hank Azaria for their buffed body work). Meanwhile he has Jennifer Aniston running around and apparently has no significant ideas as to what do with her so that the romantic part of the film's equation is within sight of the comedy part. The woman can do more than stand there and look cute but apparently nobody making movies in Hollywood has been able to come up with a major league idea for using her talents. Aniston was pretty good in "The Good Girl," and has some nice moments in "Rock Star" and "Bruce Almighty," not to mention "The Iron Giant," but we are still waiting for somebody to come up with a really great romantic comedy that focuses on her as the lead character.

The final sign that "Along Came Polly" has bit time problems is when the most tender moment in the film comes between Reuben and his best friend, the forgetten child actor and bagpipe player, Sandy Lyle (Hoffman). For that matter, when Reuben's father (Bob Dishy) suddenly breaks his silence to offer sage advice, why on earth does he not give it to his son? Just like too many parts of this movie, it is close but no cigar. The idea of a guy afraid to take risks who falls for a girl who is unwilling to commit is a solid enough idea (it has worked before), but it requires the romance to be as important as the comedy, and Hamburg is out of his depth in that half of the equation.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Nothing Great !!
Review: It's the typical story of a guy meet girl !! I was expecting it to have something different, however the movie failed to deliver anything exceptional.

I somehow find it amazing to see how some people still continue make movies on the same story lines, and to cap it off, such movies still manage to rake in good revenue at the box office.

It's okay to watch just once.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Nothing Great !!
Review: It's the typical story of guy meet girl !! I was expecting it to have something different, however the movie failed to deliver anything exceptional.

I somehow find it amazing to see how some people still continue make movies on the same story lines, and to cap it off, such movies still manage to rake in good revenue at the box office.

It's okay to watch just once.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: highly amusing and fun with Must See TV stars
Review: Reuben (Ben Stiller) marries Lisa (Debra Messing of NBC's "Will & Grace") only to have him cuckold him the first day of his honeymoon to St. Bart's. Dispirited, he goes home to NYC to recoup at his life as a risk analyst for insurance underwriters.

His best friend Sandy --- an actor in ONE 1980s teen flick which looks like John Hughes directed it -- convinces him to attend a very weird art gallery opening, where a waitress on the catering staff is Polly (Jennifer Aniston), whom he and Sandy knew back in the 7th grade.

Polly is colorful, flaky and fun, and Reuben is attracted to her for being everything he is not. This is also what makes him want to stay away from her, as it is so different from what he is. I loved when he is talking to Polly on the phone, and the scene switches from her in her artsy vivid flat, and then to him in his ultramodern black-and-white decorated apartment.

It is a bit bothersome that the crux of Polly and Reuben's fling (as Polly insists it is called) borrows heavily from a 1995 episode of "Friends". EVERYONE is going to recognize it as such!

But overall this is a highly amusing, romantic and adorable flick. The look on Polly's face when she discovers uptight Reuben has learned how to salsa (badly) just for her is very touching. It's a great movie to see on a date, with friends, or even alone -- it is that good!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Along Came Polly
Review: Reuben Feffer's marriage is over before it begins when he catches his new wife with a scuba instructor on their honeymoon. Returning home distraught, his best friend, Sandy, drags him to a party where he is reunited with Polly, a girl he has not seen since high school. They start dating, and while attracted to each other, they are complete opposites. This is a genuinely funny movie, and Ben Stiller is in his element. Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the show though, as Sandy, the one time child actor and best friend of Reuben. Funny and well worth your time.


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