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The film has a good cast, all of whom have proved their mettle in comic roles before (Stiller, Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Debra Messing) but this script just didn’t give them any opportunity to flex their comic muscles. Reuben Feffer (Stiller) is a sensible, straight-laced Risk Assessor at an insurance company who has a working knowledge of the danger lurking in any given situation. He can calculate the precise amount of bacteria living in a bowl of bar nuts and this hyper awareness is brought to bear on every aspect of the way he lives his life. His theories are shattered however when his carefully chosen, seemingly perfect new bride cheats on him on their honeymoon. Then he randomly runs into an old high school acquaintance the free spirited, drifter Polly Prince and despite the fact that she seems completely unsuitable he decides to ask her out. They go on a series of disastrous dates where the slapstick and ‘gross out’ humour goes into overdrive. Reuben finds himself in a variety of what are for him, extremely challenging situations including eating with his hands in an ‘ethnic’ restaurant, which exacerbates his chronic case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and results in a not so hilarious scene involving a lack of toilet paper, a hand towel embroidered by Polly’s late Grandmother and a toilet that won’t flush. The writer attempts to rework this worn out gag by throwing a blind ferret wearing a knitted jumper into the mix and if you’re chuckling to yourself right now then maybe you will enjoy this film, but frankly it just didn’t cut it for me. Anyway the upshot of it all is that Reuben realises that there’s more to life than just going with the cautious option all the time and whilst this is a worthy conclusion to draw, he really does seem to have such a horrible time with Polly (and she doesn’t seem to be having a whale of a time with her either) that it isn’t a convincing decision at all. Philip Seymour Hoffman is totally wasted in the role of Reuben’s deluded best friend Sandy Lyle and Ben Stiller who exhibits his gift for the ridiculous in Zoolander leaves a lot to be desired in the straight man role. Jennifer Aniston proved she could play more than Rachel Green in The Good Girl but unfortunately she has nothing to work with here. It’s not an unbearable watch but if you can think of something better to do then you may as well.
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