I totally enjoyed Along Came Polly, starring Ben Stiller (straight-laced, senior insurance risk analyst, Reuben Feffer) and Jennifer Aniston (no-plan, live-for-the moment Polly Prince).

The one part (or two) in the movie that made me pause, grab my notepad and write down is when Reuben’s father, Irving, spoke for the first time in the movie. He was making a point to Reuben’s old friend, Lyle (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman):

It’s always the same story with you, huh, pal?
You did this one movie a hundred years ago.
From then on, you thought your were better than everybody else.
Why don’t you let go?
Move on with your life.
It’s not about what happened in the past…
or what you think might happen in the future.
It’s about the ride, for Christ’s sake.
There’s no point going through all this crap…
if you’re not gonna enjoy the ride.
And you know what?
When you least expect it, something great might come along
something even better than you ever planned.

The wisdom of Irving Feffer rings so true for me. I believe it will serve an important reminder on how I should live my life from now on.

On a lighter note, I’d leave you this little gem from Reuben himself, as he made up his mind to change his life…

Oh, and by the way,
I destroyed all your little throw pillows.
Yeah, because throw pillows sick, okay?
They serve no purpose.
They’re purely decorative.

from: www.shooperman.com

Without the toilet humour it would have been quite a bit more enjoyable. I did however have to laugh, and found it to be a generally quite amusing and undemanding romantic cringe-comedy about some quirky, but actually fairly normal folks (umm, by my defintion). Indeed I would hardly call Ben’s character the most cautious man on Earth. Debra Messing (Grace, of Will and Grace) was a nice addition, and I particularly enjoyed Aussie Bryan Brown’s interpretation of a high flyer. Meanwhile Aniston was a bit flaccid but then her character was more than a little flighty (having said that, if she exists in real life—I want to meet her!). The scuba diving Frenchman’s accent was not very convincing for someone who does such a great job on the Simpsons, and I felt rather sorry for the blind ferret.

It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good either. It was just sorta blehish (not that I expected much anyway).