This movie has a problem. It wants to be a love story that appeals not only to the female demographic, but also to 14 year-old boys. The trouble is that it vastly underestimates the intelligence of both audiences, and we end up with a predictable "unlikely" romance peppered with jokes about poo and sweaty, hairy fat guys. The result is crap.

Ben Stiller plays Reuben, an anal-retentive New York insurance company risk analyst whose wife, Lisa (Debra Messing), leaves him on their honeymoon for a French scuba instructor. Reuben returns to the big city dejected, but never mind—within a week or two he’s head over heels for Polly (Jennifer Aniston), a free-spirited, spicy-food eating, ferret-owning waitress he meets at an art opening. Seemingly within minutes, Reuben learns to throw caution to the wind. He eats with his hands. He goes Salsa dancing. He destroys decorative throw pillows. He’s changed. Just in time for Lisa to return, weepily apologizing and offering him a safe and secure married life in the suburbs.

So Reuben must make a choice. But there’s no drama here, though, because anyone who’s seen half a dozen movies knows how it ends. And because the main characters have no substance. Instead, Reuben explains his risk-averseness by declaring that his parents made him afraid of everything. Polly one-ups him by saying that her father had a whole second family out on Long Island. This brief attempt to evoke sympathy feels so obvious and tacked-on that it backfires completely. Aniston and Stiller have no chemistry whatsoever, and it’s simply beyond belief that these two would have made it beyond the first date.

For "comedy, " we have Reuben’s bowels running amok during said first date, the result of his first encounter with Moroccan food (the writers have thoughtfully explained in advance that Reuben has irritable bowel syndrome). We also have a completely irrelevant scene in which Reuben guards the aforementioned sweaty, hairy fat guy during a game of pick-up basketball.

But the only funny scenes in the movie come courtesy of the talented supporting cast, including Hank Azaria as the scuba instructor, Alec Baldwin as Reuben’s boss, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Reuben’s friend, a former child star still basking in his former glory. Even Bryan Brown (anyone remember FX?) shows up as a potential client of Reuben’s company. These actors give gleaming performances in spite of the poor material they’re given to work with. Ben Stiller phones in another performance as the geeky-normal guy thrown into awkward situations, thus reinforcing his growing reputation as a one-trick pony. Jennifer Aniston is particularly disappointing, especially after such good work in Office Space, She’s The One, and The Good Girl.