Starring: Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Debra Messing, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin

4 out of 10 stars

Smooth, professional and utterly forgettable, Along Came Polly is the cinematic equivalent of an NBC "hammock" show – those regrettable sitcoms that have positioned themselves on Thursday nights for the past decade after Friends, Seinfeld, et al, hoping for a chance at fame and stardom. From its Pottery Barn/Hold Everything interiors to the casting of Must See TV actresses Jennifer Aniston and Debra Messing, Polly does everything it can to remind you of the comfort food that passes for innocuous Thursday night television, down to the transparent comedy patterns and wacky joke premises that are all build-up and no payoff. You can even take this comparison far enough back to the early 90s, when lead star Ben Stiller did a guest stint on Friends and funny man Hank Azaria, who has a cameo here, played a dog walker on then-girlfriend Helen Hunt's sitcom Mad About You. The only thing missing is the little "NBC" logo in the bottom right-hand corner reminding you that Average Joe 2 is on Monday nights!

Though its trappings are pure NBC, Polly actually co-opts its premise from an ABC show, Dharma and Greg, in pairing an uptight, handsome professional man with a flighty, carefree sexy gal. Stiller's the Greg here, playing Reuben the risk-assessment manager, whose job it is to find the most cautious, least threatening clients for insurance firms. With his talent for sniffing out risky prospects, it's funny that he didn't suss out earlier that his fiancée (Messing) would two-time him on the first day of their honeymoon with a naked scuba diving instructor (Azaria, sporting a cheesy French accent and pecs of steel – congrats to your trainer, Hank!). Alone and bereft, within days of returning to New York he bumps into junior high honey Polly (Aniston), a friendly, air-headed sort who seems taken with him despite the fact that they have absolutely nothing in common. A bad first date ensues involving ethnic food, Reuben's irritable bowel syndrome, an expensive loofah and Polly's pet ferret, but Polly is such an accommodating gal (or rather, the screenplay is such an accommodating gal) that they try a second date at an "underground salsa club." Gradually, the prissy guy and the free-spirited gal grow closer, until the unfaithful wife pops back into the picture.

While there's absolutely nothing original about Polly, it doesn't irritate as much as recent rom-coms of late have, thanks mostly to a genuine effort to give Reuben and Polly's nascent relationship some kind of organic quality. Writer-director John Hamburg (who toiled on Stiller's Zoolander and Meet the Parents) does try hard to make it seem like the attraction of these two disparate people might be natural and affecting, as opposed to zany and far-fetched. However, given Stiller and Aniston's complete lack of chemistry, the result comes off closer to two high school kids who, thrown together on a group project, try to make the best of it and get a passing grade. Aniston shifts from one Friends persona to another, co-opting Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe to such a degree that you wonder if Kudrow could take some kind of legal action (or at least part of Aniston's salary). Stiller's the main surprise here, dialing down his grating persona into an amiable, low-key kind of guy, backpedaling on the bug-eyed hissy fits and gently bringing up Reuben's neuroses without hysteria. It's a relief from his past few over-the-top performances but, unfortunately, it ain't funny.

With its two laid-back leads, the notes of wackiness in Polly are left to be played by three consummate character actors: Alec Baldwin, Bryan Brown and Philip Seymour Hoffman. As Stiller's goofball boss, Baldwin veers precariously close to cartoonish with his dese-dem-dose accent and outsized glasses (not to mention gut), but the result is a kind of Glengarry Glen Ross via Saturday Night Live, and fortunately his screen time amounts to about the same number of minutes as a single SNL sketch. Brown, as an Aussie wildman-cum-millionaire who Reuben's assessing for insurance, sails blithely through a number of life-threatening stunts (base jumping, a Perfect Storm-style yacht outing) while never losing his affable grin. Best – but also unfortunately, worst too – is Hoffman, whose character, a teen actor who starred in a Breakfast Club-type movie and has been milking it ever since, seems transplanted wholly from some other movie (Dickie Roberts, perhaps?). While he verges on hilarious parody with a community theater production of Jesus Christ Superstar (where, as Judas, he attempts to upstage Christ at every opportunity), Hoffman's also left with the Farrelly Brothers-style gross out humor that Stiller finally seems to have had enough of. It's a queasy combo, and he winds up neither funny nor disgusting enough to register as memorable for much longer than ten minutes after the end credits have rolled – though, granted, that's about nine minutes more than Polly itself. Say, is it time for ER yet?