Review of Along Came Polly

Introduction

There is a vacancy in the land of rom-coms; the reigning Queen has apparently abdicated. Meg Ryan has moved on the bigger and better things… Well she has moved on, and there is room for a new Queen at the top of the rom-com roost. Potential applicants for the position include Sandra Bullock and Renee Zellwegger, but with the end of Friends, three new actresses are free to make their mark in the land of the romantic comedy. The most likely of these to claim the crown is of course Jennifer Aniston, who as Rachel had an on-off relationship with Ross that provided nearly 10 years of small screen rom-comminess. It would only take one decent movie to instantly catapult her to rom-com superstar. Is Along Came Polly that film? (And I promise not to use the word rom-com anymore)

Reuben Feffer is a risk analyst who has planned his life to anal perfection. He has envisaged a perfect life with a perfect wife in a perfect house, making a perfect family. Lisa Kramer is that perfect wife and one quick wedding later, the happy couple are on their way to a glorious Caribbean honeymoon. Which is where his perfect world collapses once they meet a nudist scuba instructor. Suffice it to say that Reuben returns from his honeymoon alone. He doesn`t get much time to mope though, as his best friend Sandy insists that he pick himself up. At a party, he meets an old school friend Polly Prince, and he decides she is the one. It`s just that as anal and as risk aware Reuben is, Polly is the diametric opposite, freewheeling, non-committal and possessing a blind ferret. Can opposites attract, especially when they are this opposite?

Video

Along Came Polly gets a pristine 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. With a film barely six months old, you wouldn`t expect any kind of print damage, and indeed the image is crystal clear throughout and the colours are vibrant. In fact the only problem I saw was a minor smidgen of moiré, caused by the logo on a T-shirt in one brief moment of one scene.

Audio

You get a choice of DD 5.1 or DTS English sound. It`s not a particularly surround intensive film, focusing more on dialogue but the surrounds are put to good use for the music and ambience. It must be noted that you can`t change tracks on the fly, and have to do so from the appropriate menus. English subtitles are provided.

Features

The extras begin with a nice set of ferret based animated menus, although I wish they wouldn`t play choice moments of the film in the background.

The deleted scenes begin rather incongruously with a separate alternative opening to the film, lasting one and a half minutes. You can watch this with or without commentary from the director John Hamburg.

The rest of the deleted scenes are bunched together and last about 6 minutes, the highlight being Debra Messing`s rap. Again you can choose to listen to the director`s commentary explaining why the scenes were excised.

Rodolfo Goes To Hollywood is a five-minute ferret featurette. The ferret goes to the premiere and takes a TV crew with him; it`s short and pointless.

The Making Of Along Came Polly is your usual featurette lasting 11 minutes, with plenty of clips from the film interspersed with self-congratulatory interviews with the cast and the crew.

There are 5 minutes of Outtakes, where you can see professional actors cracking up and giggling. There`s the theatrical trailer of course.

Finally there is a director`s commentary from John Hamburg. It`s pretty much your standard affair, where he talks about making the film, the cast and other informational titbits. It can be a little gappy at times and it`s really more appreciated by fans of the film rather than the casual viewer.

All the extras are presented in 4:3, either letterbox or regular, and subtitles are provided for everything including the commentary. You`ll have to select the subtitles for the deleted scenes and commentary via your remote though, as there is no explicit choice on the menus to do so.

Conclusion

Along Came Polly is a film that manages to entertain for its 90 minutes on screen and doesn`t outstay its welcome. On the other hand its hardly memorable, with a sweet charming little tale of two opposites attracting that adds nothing to the genre. It has two things going against it, the most obvious of which is the prevalence of toilet humour. Our hero Reuben is introduced as a man plagued by Irritable Bowel Syndrome, so cue plenty of scatological gags, potty jokes and casual flatulence. It`s hardly the thing that you would associate with the average romantic comedy and it`s certainly not to my taste. But the more fundamental problem is the story; it`s just not interesting. This is a story that focuses on Reuben`s travails, and the question it poses is, will he sort his life out? Polly is almost a secondary character, you get very little of her viewpoint and her character is just not fleshed out adequately. Even more worrying is the ease with which they end up together. In the usual genre movie, the protagonists have to come together through some kind of adversity, whether it`s other partners, or the fact that they initially can`t stand each other. Along Came Polly places no obstacles in the way of the main characters and it`s a fairly pedestrian ride from beginning to end.

It`s fortunate then that the cast is so good. While Ben Stiller is his usual likeable self as the repressed Reuben Feffer, and Jennifer Aniston makes the most of the underwritten Polly, both of them having some genuine chemistry, it`s the supporting cast that grab the attention. Philip Seymour Hoffman, saviour of movies, is magnetic as Sandy Lyle, failed movie star who lives on the fame of one single film. He`s Reuben`s best friend and advisor and contrasts well as a total slob to Reuben`s perfectionist. Will and Grace`s Debra Messing also shines as Lisa who runs off with Claude the scuba instructor, incidentally played by an impressively toned Hank Azaria with another hilarious accent. Amazingly no CGI was used in the construction of his body. Bryan Brown has a great role as an extreme sports enthusiast who is trying to get insured, but the surprise of the film has to be Alec Baldwin`s performance as Stan Indursky, Reuben`s boss. Gruff and over-familiar, he creates an overbearing boor of man whose catchphrase of "Good Things" is curiously charming.

It`s a shame that such a good cast is wasted on such a poor story. Indeed, Jennifer Aniston who has made such strides getting away from her Rachel Green character, must have seen this film`s plot twist as rather familiar, having been lifted wholesale from Season 2 of Friends. The jokes are crude, and the romance is hardly special, but the performances are great. Add to that a colourful selection of supporting characters and this film is lifted just above the mundane. You`ll be entertained, but you`ll also be left thinking of what could have been.

The disc is very good, the picture as you would expect is nigh on perfect and the sound can`t really be faulted. The extras are ordinary and run of the mill, but are a welcome addition to the disc. It`s just that there`s better out there than this.