Along Came Polly (2004)
Directed by John Hamburg
Reuben Feffer is a guy who's spent his entire life playing it safe. Polly Prince is irresistible as a free-spirit who lives for the thrill of the moment. When these two comically mismatched souls collide, Reuben's world is turned upside down, as he makes an uproarious attempt to change his life from middle-of-the-road to totally-out-there.
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It stretches belief that Polly would give Reuben as many chances as she does and a subplot about insuring billionaire Leland Van Lew (Bryan Brown, "Gorillas in the Mist"), an Xtreme sports nut, isn't successfully integrated.
Hoffman physically works the role, playing exuberantly bad basketball, shuffling out of a room ('I just sharted' - a new word is coined, for better or worse), taking over the lead role of a Hell's Kitchen Community Theater production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" or making just lolling about funny with perfect placement of limbs.
Philip Seymour Hoffman does what he can in the best-friend role as a has-been actor so conceited that he insists on playing Judas and Jesus in a community production of "Jesus Christ Superstar."
A scene in which Stiller kisses up to his boss (Alec Baldwin) in the men's room recalls an awkward moment in "Brazil," and the urinal humor that drives the scene is straight out of "Austin Powers" (which was hardly the originator of such gags in the first place).
Best of all, though, is the tart, sharply observed script by director John Hamburg, co-writer of such hits as "Meet the Parents" and writer-director of the underrated gem and 1998 Sundance charmer "Safe Men." Hamburg has a gift for absurd humor grounded in real life and, let's face it, sometimes that includes passing gas.
John Hamburg ("Safe Men"), cowriter of Stiller starrers "Meet the Parents" and "Zoolander," also takes up the directorial reins for "Along Came Polly," an OK romantic comedy goosed up by supporting players Alec Baldwin, Hank Azaria and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Moreover, writer/director John Hamburg (Safe Men, Meet the Parents) throws in a ton of the expected pseudo-Farrelly Brother gags from a hairy, sweaty, shirtless guy to a blind ferret that keeps running into walls and something called a "shart" that's better left unexplained.
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After an embarrassingly crude toast by his boss Stan Indursky (Alec Baldwin, "The Cooler"), Reuben and his new wife Lisa (Debra Messing, TV's "Will & Grace") are off to honeymoon in St. Barts, but on day one Reuben stumbles upon her doing the nasty with French nudist scuba instructor Claude (Hank Azaria, "Shattered Glass," looking very chiseled).