Dharma & Greg, the movie
Along Came Polly (2004) : 4 out of 10: Welcome to Dharma & Greg, the movie. Some stupendously unoriginal ideas meet Ben Stiller going to the Farrelly Brothers’ well once too often.
For example, blind sweater-wearing ferrets are neither particularly funny nor cute and what ganja toking screenwriter would think so? (John Hamburg is our guilty party who penned the much funnier Zoolander and Meet the Parents)
The bathroom humor is not funny and kills the romantic plot. Stiller uses a decorative bath towel instead of toilet paper on a first date with Jennifer Aniston. That they have a second date pushes this movie into the realm of science fiction. I’ve known a woman to end a ten-year marriage for less.
Some ideas were funny on their own (Philip Seymour Hoffman’s child actor character for example) but it does not nearly enough with them and we are quickly back to Dharma & Greg um excuse me, Stiller and Aniston. Actually, if it wasn’t for Hoffman and Alec Baldwin’s Jewish boss character and Bryan Brown’s Australian eccentric, there wouldn’t have been much of a laugh during the entire film.
It’s pretty sad when you are wishing the leads would leave the screen so we can get back to the funny stuff. (Though Anniston looks hot in her PG-13 sex scene.)
The director (John Hamburg again) cut Debra Messing’s rap song as not in tune with the film (seen in deleted scenes). He was right. It wasn’t in tune with the rest of the film. It was freaking hilarious. More outrageously funny scenes and less of the usual Stiller stick and the romantic plot would have been welcome.