Ben Stiller

Am I the only person who thinks Ben Stiller isn’t the least bit funny? I think I was the only person who did not like Ben Stiller’s character in “There’s Something About Mary”. Other than the time when he was nice to Cameron Diaz’s mentally challenged brother, there was nothing to like about his character. He was a total loser. He couldn’t do anything right, and yet he wins the girl. But now, the reviews of the new movie “Along Came Polly” (which I have not yet seen) make me feel a lot better. Perhaps I’m not alone in my opinion. Stephen Holden, in the New York Times, says:

But this flat romantic comedy … fails to provide any reason a spunky free-spirited girl-next-door like Ms. Aniston’s character, Polly Prince, would give Reuben Feffer, Mr. Stiller’s uptight nerd, a second glance.

Then there’s Christy Lemire of the Associated Press who writes:

After “There’s Something About Mary,” “Meet the Parents” and “Duplex,” it seemed Ben Stiller had played characters who’ve humiliated and injured themselves in every imaginable way and had every possible bodily fluid spew from them or spill on them.

Now, along comes “Along Came Polly,” in which Stiller gets carried away on yet another wave of gross-out gags, all of them desperately straining for laughs, few of them truly earning any.