She's messy, not afraid to eat food others have touched, and coasts along without a life plan. He's neat, afraid of germs, and analyzes everything. In Hollywoodland, that means they're meant for each other. Along Came Polly, a romantic comedy starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston, proves that sometimes even talented actors can't make a ridiculous script work.

Screenwriter/director John Hamburg missed the mark with this one. Although his previous work as co-writer of Meet the Parents and Zoolander earned my admiration for its depiction of comic characters in embarrassing situations, Along Came Polly overdoes embarrassment at the expense of comedy. Like his character in Meet the Parents, Stiller undergoes numerous humiliating scenes here, but this time they're more gross than funny. Guess what the film's running joke involves? Irritable bowel syndrome -- which, to me, is about as funny as a train wreck.

"What appeals to me and one of the great things about writing is that you can think of a normal situation and take it to the comic extreme, making it worse and worse -- that's how my mind works," Hamburg explains. With Along Came Polly, he certainly made it worse.

Hamburg's neglect of details also drove me up the wall. For example, Polly (Aniston) tells Reuben (Stiller) to wear comfortable shoes for a surprise get-together. But she shows up in a pair of stiletto heels. Okay, maybe I'm being too nit-picky, but that kind of thing is annoying -- like a mustache on the Mona Lisa (unless it's a Monty Python skit, of course). And how many times can you end an incomplete scene, then go to the next one showing the previous argument or problem solved without alienated more than a few viewers? 

Poor Ben Stiller. He trusted Hamburg because they worked together successfully on the two films mentioned above. "It's really great fun to work with people you know because you have this sense of trust that is really important, especially when you are doing comedy," Stiller declares. "So much about putting a comedy together is trusting someone to orchestrate it all." Oops!

According to producer Stacey Sher, someone asked Hamburg if he stayed at home and thought of ways to torture Ben Stiller. That might be true where Along Came Polly is concerned. Hamburg even made Stiller dance in scenes more tortuous than those featuring his character's irritable bowel syndrome. Elaine's infamous dancing in Seinfeld is now the second worst dance number ever filmed.        

(Released by Universal and rated "PG-13" for sexual content, language, crude humor and some drug references.)