When Ben Stiller, playing insurance risk analyst Reuben Feffer, returns to work from his honeymoon in St. Bart's, where his new wife has remained with her hunky French scuba diving instructor, there is a welcome-back/so sorry basket containing a copy of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." One hopes the talented Stiller kept the prop, because he finds himself in yet another potentially funny movie gone awry.

"Along Came Polly" is the latest in a string of disappointments that includes last year's "Duplex," the one-joke "Zoolander," "Mystery Men" and more, interrupted only by the success of "Meet the Parents." Like that film, "Polly" was written (or at least rewritten) by John Hamburg, who also directed this one. From the looks of things, this movie got away from him early on, since it never seems to know whether it wants to take a risk or play it safe.

Stiller's Reuben is yet another of his well-meaning, intelligent guys with no common sense, especially when it comes to his love life. After being embarrassingly dumped by new bride Lisa (Debra Messing), whom he caught in the act -- still wearing flippers -- with English-mangling Claude (Hank Azaria), he goes back to work. There, his vulgarian boss Stan (Alec Baldwin) assigns him the toughest of cases: deciding whether the company should recommend selling a high-ticket policy on an Australian CEO (Bryan Brown) who enjoys activities like swimming with sharks and jumping off tall public buildings with a parachute.

Reuben is talked into getting back on the horse by best pal Sandy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an actor who still eats lunch on his only hit movie, a comedy made 20 years ago. At an art gallery opening, Reuben runs into waitress Polly (Jennifer Aniston), whom he hasn't seen since middle school, when both were delegates to a mock UN convention. He impulsively decides to pursue her, despite Sandy's warning she's not his type, as evidenced by one of those thong-line tattoos on her back.

Nevertheless, the two end up going out, though their incompatibility is quickly established. She craves adventure, has lived in dozens of places and has had dozens of boyfriends. She also has a blind ferret as pet and goes salsa dancing every week.

He, on the other hand, has irritable bowl syndrome, won't eat nuts from a party bowl (only one in seven people wash their hands after going to the bathroom), spends many minutes every day arranging the decorative throw pillows on his bed and considers salsa "dirty dancing."

Though everything in "Polly" happens exactly as expected, none of it is remotely believable, and while I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Lincoln Monument is attracted to the sexy and funny Aniston, Hamburg's script does next to nothing to convince us this relationship holds even the smallest opposites-attract promise. That leaves a gaping pothole at the center of "Polly," yet the film limps by on the go-for-it-anyway supporting performances.

The largest of these is from Hoffman, ditching his sad sack persona to play a sad case, a delusional loser whose biggest dream is to front an episode of E's "True Hollywood Story." Though the part appears to have been written for Jack Black, Hoffman is hilarious, as is Baldwin, affecting a New Yawk accent more in-your-face than the Trump Tower.

More surprising yet are what are essentially cameos by a nearly unrecognizable and mostly nude Azaria, and by Bob Dishy as Reuben's father, a man of decidedly few words. (The very funny Messing, unfortunately, is asked to play it perfectly straight.) Stiller sputters and stammers his way through a character he pretty much owns at this point, but he may want to consider putting it on the market.