In some parallel universe, Ben Stiller takes chances with the characters he plays in films. He breaks new ground each time out, constantly broadening his repertoire. He isn’t always an uptight, albeit funny, Jewish man looking for love in romantic comedies, which he always seems to be here in our little universe. Thankfully for us, he tends to surround himself with a cast of stars that usually hold up the film remarkably well while Ben plays, well, the same old Ben. In 1998’s “There’s Something About Mary,” Cameron Diaz broke out of her mold and shined, while Robert DeNiro turned in a hilarious role in 2000’s “Meet the Parents.” Also that year, Edward Norton and Jenna Elfman helped keep the lukewarm “Keeping the Faith” afloat. Then last year, in what looked good on paper, Stiller teamed up with Drew Barrymore in the Danny DeVito directed “Duplex,” only to find the recipe fall flat at the box office. Now, in “Along Came Polly,” he’s mixing up the same formula again, this time teaming up with yet another beauty, Jennifer Aniston.

Again, it’s the same roles with a different, yet similar, story. Reuben Feffer (Stiller), is a Risk Assessment analyst for insurance companies who dumps his wife (Debra Messing) after he finds her having sex with a studly scuba instructor (a naked Hank Azaria) on the couple’s honeymoon in the islands. Always having order to his life, Reuben is now lost and confused in New York City, until he bumps into Polly Prince (Aniston), a girl he went to Junior High with. Reuben decides it’s fate that brought Polly and him together, and the two start dating. However, Reuben is an anal, risk-averse planner, while Polly is a non-committal adventure seeker, so the two are complete opposites. The question is, can Reuben change is orderly ways and follow his heart to be with the girl of his dreams?

Since this is a romantic comedy, there are laughs interspersing the courtship, and since we’ve tasted the recipe before, we know the results. Thankfully, although Stiller’s character is the same old “Jewish love seeker” and humorous as usual, Aniston helps the balance in her role as the flaky Polly. Although I hate to make the comparison, Aniston combines the characters of “Friends’” Rachel and Phoebe into one sexy, humorous and carefree companion to Stiller’s one-liner Reuben. While the duo produce mixed results of chemistry, the dialogue is always kept witty and light.

However, the glue that keeps this film from veering into the not-very-humorous and schmaltzy romance category is everyone’s favorite supporting actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Reuben’s best friend Sandy Lyle. An aging, overweight relic of a “child actor” who is famous for his role twenty years-ago as the bagpipe playing kid in “Crocodile Tears” (a “Breakfast Club” homage, with Sandy looking remarkably like a young Anthony Michael Hall), he is a pathetic shell of an actor who thinks he is better than everyone else. Each scene either creates or ends in extremely humorous circumstances, and is the character that really keeps the film moving.

Overall, though, the film itself is a bit jumpy, moving from scene to scene, sometimes as if the film is a giant sitcom of humorous consequences. It seems as though “Along Came Polly” is yet another attempt at recreating “Something About Mary,” but doesn’t quite succeed because it looks as though it’s trying to recreate it. The formula is there, the humor is there (even a lot of the gross-out humor), and the characters are there, but it doesn’t quite add up to a winning entry. Lighthearted and funny, it’s what we’ve come to expect from this universe’s Ben Stiller. Maybe there will be a chain reaction one day that will cause the two parallel universes to meet, but until then, “Along Came Polly” is just another reproduction that lost its flavor somewhere on the production line.