What’s Your Number?, 2011.
Directed by Mark Mylod.
Starring Anna Faris and Chris Evans.
SYNOPSIS:
After losing her job, a young woman decides to track down all of her past relationships to see if one might have been her true love.
Anna Faris is known for being funny but her movies tend not to reflect her comedic talent, typically ranging from bad to only somewhat decent. Could What’s Your Number? be her chance to finally shine in a good comedy?
Ally Darling (Anna Faris) has just recently broken up with her boyfriend. Her sister is getting married and she’s jealous because she doesn’t think she’ll ever find the right guy for her. After finding an article in a magazine about women who have slept with more than twenty men not being able to find a husband, she starts to try and remember everyone she’s slept with. When she figures out she’s slept with nineteen men she panics and ends up sleeping with her last boss (Joel McHale). That makes twenty for her, meaning now it’ll be impossible to find a husband, unless one of the previous guys she’s slept with is the guy for her. With the help of her neighbor played by Chris Evans they plan to track down all the guys and find the right man for her.
Right from the get go you can really tell how this movie is going to play out. It’s cliched to its core and as predictable as any romantic comedy can be. Now that’s not to say that it doesn’t have moments of humor and a few sweet moments. The two leads, Faris and Evans, have really great chemistry together and their relationship is fun to watch. Both actors are funny in their roles as well, providing most of the laughs in the movie.
This movie could have easily been rated ‘PG-13’ and have been marketed better but for some reason they chose to make it ‘R’, resulting in the movie not doing so well at the box office. The main problem are a lot of the jokes. There are constant sexual jokes that hardly ever have a place in the scenes they’re in and a lot of them don’t work at all, but the ones that do work are funny.
Lots of people come into this and make small cameos and most of the time you wish they could have gotten a little more screen time. Some of the guys who Ally previously slept with are played by the likes of Zachary Quinto, Anthony Mackie, Martin Freeman, Andy Samberg and Chris Pratt. All of them are pretty funny in their roles but none of them have more than maybe two minutes of screen time. With such a great cast of characters you would expect more out of this movie.
Overall What’s Your Number? has its moments but ultimately there are too many romantic comedy cliches, while not enough of the jokes work. It’s definitely worth a rental but not much more.
Jake Peffer
Originally published February 16, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
