It's about the ride! - by Aisling Walsh
I don’t usually go in for rom-coms. It was beaten out of me as a teenager that rom-coms were nothing more than mental candy-floss, unworthy of intellectual or artistic time or consideration. It’s a prejudice which stuck with me for far longer than it should have. While rom-coms are rarely among my favourites (heteronormativity is a bummer man), I do allow myself to indulge in a happily-ever-after fantasy every so often when I’m feeling blue. One of those indulgences is Along Came Polly.
With a mere 27% on Rotten Tomatoes and a slew of bad reviews from the New York Times (irritating heat rash), Robert Egbert (a lot of things don't work out, including, alas, the movie itself) and most, ehm, glowingly The Guardian (reeking, radioactive rubbish), Along Came Polly did not fair well at the box office. Released in 2004, when both Ben Stiller and Jennifer Anniston were at the top of their game, it’s more likely to appear on ‘movies to avoid’ than ‘what to watch’ lists. Yet thanks to the limited cinematic offerings of Netflix and in-flight entertainment, I recently has multiple chances to reevaluate my own opinion of the movie. I can now proudly proclaim to the world that Along Came Polly has become one of my favourites, not least because it turns many rom-com tropes on their head!
Along Came Polly is a 2004 rom-com flop written and directed by John Hamburg of Zoolander and Meet the Parents fame. Reuben Feffer (Ben Stiller) is an insurance risk analyst who gets jilted on his honeymoon in St. Barts when his wife, Lisa (Debra Messing), hooks up with their scuba instructor (Hank Azaria). Returning alone to New York, Reuben is advised by his best friend Sandy Lyle (Philip Seymor Hoffman) to start dating again. When Reuben bumps into a high school friend, Polly Prince (Jennifer Anniston), at a party he decides to give it a try. After a couple of disastorous dates (involving an IBS emergency and an overpriced loofa) they begin to fall for each other. But can they reconcile Reuben’s need to control with Polly’s fear of commitment and make it work?
In one of my Everything Everywhere All At Once universes there is an Aisling – not Alpha Aisling, she’s busy writing her tenth bestseller – who has written a thesis on how mainstream rom-coms peddle heteronormative ideology through their white wedding endings. Along Came Polly starts with a wedding that turns quickly into divorce and ends with a ‘let’s see how it goes’ between two people. It’s about two people who seem like polar opposites (more on that below) but who decide voluntarily, rather than through the kind of manipulation, subterfuge or coercion we could normally expect in a rom-com, to change their behaviour and relationship patterns. Though Polly does stray dangerously close to becoming a manic-pixie-dream-girl, both she and Reuben realise for themselves that their modus operandi is not really working for them, nor making them happy. There are no personality transplants in Along Came Polly, no grand gestures (unless you count eating peanuts off the road as a grand gesture) no stunts, no tricks, just two people meeting each other somewhere in the middle.
I saw Along Came Polly for the first time in the cinema, on an actual first date, which went so badly I avoided rewatching the film for years. Not because I didn’t enjoy the movie but, because I didn’t want to remember that date, nor think about what it meant.
It all started like this: my school friends told me their classmate from Uni, S_, had liked me for ages, but had been too shy to do anything about it. I must admit, I had barely ever noticed him hanging around but I soon realised he spent every night out staring at me (red flag!). I wasn’t sure what to do with this information, nor the unexpected, and frankly novel, attention. I was a devastatingly shy 19-year-old with a woefully limited experience of dating.
Since we had never spoken and I knew nothing more than his name, I decided the best course of action to carry on as if I was oblivious to his attentions and see how things progressed. I wasn’t playing hard to get, I just had no idea what else to do. When he finally did make a move, weeks later, he caught me in a bar on a work night out. I was already tipsy and whatever filter I managed to maintain while sober, usually went out the window after a couple of pints. He nudged my elbow in the crowded bar, pulling me away from my colleagues, and shouted into my ear:
‘Would you like to go out sometime?’
I beamed and shouted into his ear, ‘Oh, thank god you finally said something! Yes I’d love to.’
He took my number, we arranged to see Along Came Polly the following week, and he walked me some of the way home after the cinema. But once we parted ways we never spoke again.
I was never able to confirm it, but I knew my foot-in-mouth was probably to blame. Apparently he only heard the first part of my response and had ignored the second. I could only surmise that this was a mortal blow to his male ego and could never fathom why he went ahead with the date. He could have ghosted me before we spent our precious euros on cinema tickets and a soda-popcorn combo. The date had failed before it had ever begun.
It was my most neurodivergent moment in nearly 20 years of neurodivergent dating. So even though I remember enjoying it at the time, I avoided Along Came Polly for years. It was only after my diagnosis, and the ability to reevaluate the situation through a neurodivergent lens, that I decided to give Along Came Polly another chance. Rewatching the movie over the last year I realised it might be the most neurodivergent rom-com ever made. Maybe that’s why Egbert and his ilk failed to enjoy it?
Allow me to get a little meta, if I may? What if I was to suggest that Along Came Polly is not your standard rom-com at all? What if it was actually a meta commentary on living as an undiagnosed AuDHDer (autistic & ADHD) in a neurotypical world, always fighting against yourself?
Reuben is my over-anxious, needing to plan and control everything, hygiene obsessed, risk analysing, autistic self. The part of me who has IBS and is scared of new foods, new experiences and changes to her routine, who analyses all life decisions from multiple angles, making lists of possible risks, pros and cons.
Polly is my scatter-brained, novelty seeking, adventurous, losing things, breaking things, messy, flighty, ADHD self who can rarely sit still, stay in one place or focus on one thing for extended periods of time.
I am Reuben freaked out by other people’s bodily fluids, lack of hygiene and the risk of contracting ecoli from communal peanuts. I am Reuben trying to learn salsa but never quite managing the steps, rhythm nor sensuality. I cannot count the number of times I’ve stepped on patient and not-so-patient salsa partners’ toes.
But I’m also Polly’s inability to keep her apartment tidy, to find her keys or stop herself from splurging on a $200 loofah. I cannot count the amount of times I have had to empty my handbag onto my doorstep looking for my keys only to realise I left them in the freezer (or somewhere else that is not my bag).
I like routine but I get bored easily and crave novelty. I have moved house 20+ times in 20 years. I can go into hyerfocus and lose myself in a piece of writing for hours. Or I can flick between Word, Twitter, email, my weekly planner and a cup of coffee multiple times in the space of five minutes. I have lived and travelled across three continents but tend to fall into the same routines no matter where I go.
Unlike many rom-coms, Polly and Reuben geniunely like other, are interested in each other’s lives and they even find each other attractive! But for most of the film they are at odds with each other to the point where they feel they will never make it work. And then somehow they realise that rather than remaining in conflict for the rest of their lives they might actually compliment each other: Polly’s chaos balancing out Reuben’s need for order and control, Reuben’s risk assessment tempering the excesses of Polly’s impulsiveness.
The movie ends not in another wedding but, in a return to St. Barts so Reuben can process his trauma. On the beach where it all went wrong for Reuben the couple express their willingness to ‘give it a go’, somewhere in between both their needs and fears, without the pressure of rings, babies or other socially dictated relationship goals. No more, no less.
What if I was to suggest that their meeting in the middle is not unlike an autistic and ADHDer integrating these, sometimes competing and conflicting, parts of themselves and settling into a happier, more coherent self? There will no doubt be kinks along the way, but they might just make it if they can work together!
So that’s Along Came Polly, maybe not the best but certainly not the worst rom-com ever made, and I will die on this hill!
Before I go, lets take a moment to appreciate Philip Seymour Hoffman, hamming it up the way only he can, as Reuben’s best friend and recovering child actor Sandy. He was a gem, deserved more from Hollywood and is dearly missed from our screens.
Also a passing salute to Hank Azaria’s less offensive than usual doe-eyed impression of a French scuba instructor.
ncG1vNJzZmiZpamwor%2FTrGWsrZKowaKvymeaqKVfpXyqwNJmmJunpal6tbTEZqminJU%3D