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Along Came Polly
Universal Pictures
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, language, crude humor and some drug references
Starring
Ben Stiller,
Jennifer Aniston,
Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Debra Messing,
Alec Baldwin,
Hank Azaria,
Bryan Brown,
and
Jsu Garcia
Reuben (Stiller) has made a fine life and a good career out of playing it safe. Polly (Aniston) plays her life like a game of chance. So when a chance encounter reunites these childhood friends, Reuben finds his world turned upside down.
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
John Hamburg
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
John Hamburg
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: June 8, 2004
Video: June 8, 2004
Theatrical: January 16, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
90 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Its story is paint-by- numbers...But it's funny, and funny covers a lot of sins.
70
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
Is Along Came Polly a great film? No, probably not, but it is a very amusing one.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Along Came Polly is nothing if not a chick flick for guys.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
So familiar you may have moments of deja vu.
63
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Polly works best when writer-director John Hamburg gets his mind out of the water closet, and it's in there about two-fifths of the way. The rest of the time, he's assembling a hit-and-miss comedy with reasonable numbers of laughs and lots of personality from its two leads.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
The best reason to see Along Came Polly is the supporting cast.
63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Has plenty of funny moments, but there's no chemistry between stars Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. It's hard to accept that these two characters are, or even could be, in love. So, while the film is pleasant and sporadically entertaining, it can't be considered an unequivocal success.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
[Hoffman] gives gross-out comedy a whole new depth.
60
Dallas Observer
Bill Gallo
Hamburg's smartypants banter is a bit spotty, but the bathroom humor, of all things, hits the mark, and Stiller's trademark wide-eyed bafflement wins the day again.
60
Empire
Caroline Westbrook
It’s not bad, but given all the talent involved, it would have been nice for Hamburg to push the envelope a bit further and deliver something with real bite. As it is, this is more of a pleasant, but forgettable, time-filler.
58
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Remove the razzle-dazzle provided by Azaria, Hoffman, Baldwin, the gross jokes and that ferret, and you wind up with a pretty dull and ordinary face.
50
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
Something we've all seen before, far too many times, not only in its premise but also in its lame parade of scatological jokes and its sad, tired pratfalls.
50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
With a cast this gifted, some of the throwaway jokes stick, but when Along Came Polly goes for its biggest, grossest laughs, the strings show well in advance.
50
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
There is no central drama, no surprise, no tension in his comedy. The ads for Along Came Polly make it look so upbeat and simple that you're convinced it must be hiding something, like death or a disease. But the truth is there in the advertising: nothing happens.
50
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
There isn't a lot in the movie that is funny.
50
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Firmly ensconced among the forgettables in Stiller's career, a generic romantic comedy of the one-from-column-A, one-from-column-B variety.
50
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
Some movies run out of gas. This one could use an alternate fuel source.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Might be a lame, formulaic comedy, but it sets up entertaining sequences cleverly designed for the talents of three of its stars and has the good sense to get out of the way and let audiences enjoy their performances.
50
Variety
Robert Koehler
Writer-director John Hamburg does everything he can to pair up Ben Stiller's stiff, safety-first corporate man with Jennifer Aniston's free spirit in Along Came Polly, but the two are so fundamentally incompatible that story loses credibility long before the gags stop coming.
50
USA Today
Mike Clark
The civilized running time and breezy editing between scattershot plot threads keep the attention in a superficial way, and it would be misstating the case to deny that the movie has some chuckles (the kind that don't linger).
50
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Hampered by the kind of overacting that the cast seems to enjoy more than the audience.
50
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
In the not-so-grand scheme of such things, Along Came Polly is certainly harmless, and occasionally very funny. It's just not clever enough to keep you engaged.
50
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Stiller and Aniston have zero sexual chemistry. But they have impeccable comic chemistry in a movie that features some stellar bits of business.
50
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Recycles gags from various, more successful gross-out and romantic comedies, but without any zest or imagination.
40
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
Largely innocuous and forgettable, Polly lacks "Mary's" romantic pathos and psychosexual anxiety and is a few squirmy set pieces shy of "Meet the Parents."
40
LA Weekly
Chuck Wilson
The film is sporadically amusing, especially early on. But as the gross-outs dwindle, one is left to contemplate if Stiller has always been this neckless and to wonder just why Aniston wastes her summer vacation on junk such as this.
40
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
On paper it has every advantage, from gifted stars Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston to an established comedy writer-director with a promising idea about a romance between a carefree woman and a worried man. But instead of maximizing those pluses, Along Came Polly so completely fritters them away that even its brief 90 minutes feels unhappily long.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Something of a snooze.
40
Slate
David Edelstein
The movie is a peculiar and unsatisfying hybrid--but above all it's a pedestal to its popular leading man, Ben Stiller.
38
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
In this movie, when the honeymoon is over it's really over.
30
Film Threat
Peter Lowry
The result was one of the worst films I've seen in a long, long time as this entire movie proved to me is that it's never too early to start the race for next year's Golden Razzies...
30
TV Guide
Staff (Not Credited)
A romantic comedy whose no-holds-barred gross-out elements sour an already graceless mix of crude pratfalls and heartache.
30
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
For everyone who's been waiting for a love story between an anal retentive and a flake.
30
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
The spectacle of two mature stars forced to grovel in the bathroom for cheap laughs is pathetic.
25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Weak acting, even by Hoffman. Aniston is so far above this material she should never, ever have signed on.
 The average user rating for this movie is 3.5 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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