Along Came Polly Review

The last time Jen and Ben got together, Marc Anthony came out trumps. But, I still do not know why he dumped his supermodel wife for Ms. Lopez.

And, I still do not know why Jennifer Aniston will always remain Rachel Green of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. to me, no matter how many new characters she tries to play. Or why Ben Stiller will always remind me of a certain kind of hair gel that only Cameron Diaz could make infamous. Also, I do not know why Polly came along.

Rueben Pepper (Ben Stiller) is your regular guy whose only aspirations in life are to get married to the girl of his dreams and live happily ever after. Okay, he is as regular as a guy with those aspirations can be. He is also a risk analyst for an insurance company. So, he decides to get married to the girl that his riskometer claims is a safe bet.

Off they go on their honeymoon to the Bahamas (or some place like it) where his wife, Lisa (Debra Messing - Grace of Will & Grace), does some hanky-panky with the scuba-diving instructor. Now, Rueben's not the kind of guy to take offence at that. But, they hadn't even bothered to take off their flippers before jumping in the sack! No self-respecting man could be expected to put up with that.

Rueben walks away from their one-day marriage and right into Polly Prince (Jennifer Aniston - damn, Brad Pitt must have done something right!), a middle-school chum of his. They catch up in an Indian restaurant, which provides the perfect opportunity for any Hollywood director to look down upon us.

What follows are your regular gags of toilet humor and guttural jokes until it is time for Lisa to come back. Then the gags reach a completely new level hitherto unreached by even Adam Sandler.

Rueben is in a fix - whether to go back to Lisa or start afresh with Polly, who does not want to start anything more than a fling with him. That is not so bad, he thinks. He tells Polly to move in with him but not before his riskometer tells her that. She only does what all lead actresses in romantic comedies have been doing ever since the days of Grace Kelly (and she only did westerns!).

Polly decides to leave town. Rueben decides otherwise. No, not about whether he should leave town too, but about Polly's leaving town. He runs after her, and woos her by doing the most disgusting thing ever done in the history of civilization - he eats nuts after rubbing them vigorously on the sidewalk. Eww!

To be fair though, the movie is not as bad as it sounds. It has its moments, not all bad. But, it also has Jennifer Aniston - that is all the reason most of us need to catch the flick.