Review of What's Your Number? (2011) by Christopher S — 13 Jan 2012

I guess I should have known what I was in for when the opening scene to the film is a complete copy of one of the funnier moments from the film "Bridesmaids"... Most likely a coincidence since both films were filming at the same time but a bad omen nonetheless when 2 films share the exact same scene and it's not intentional.

"What's Your Number?" is your typical paint by numbers Rom-Com with a standard run-of-the-mill plot line. Ally Darling (Anna Faris) is becoming concerned that she might never find "Mr. Right." Her sister Daisy (Ari Graynor) is getting married and her mother Ava (Blythe Danner) keeps bugging Ally to move forward with her life as well. During a ride on the subway after getting fired from her job, she reads a magazine article revealing the national average of sexual partners for women is 10.5. Her friends range between four and nine, while she worries about her seemingly large number of 19. She decides not to surpass 20, which the article states is the breaking point that finds women unable to land a husband after sleeping with 20 guys. She makes a "proclamation" that her very next sexual partner must be the man she'll be with forever. Unfortunately she ends up sleeping with Number 20 which leads her to come up with a Plan B. Nonetheless, she hatches a plot to locate all of her ex-boyfriends to see which ones might have evolved into husband material. She enlists the help of Her Next Door Neighbor Colin (Chris Evans) who due to him growing up in a family full of Law Enforcement, has a knack for that sort of thing. Of course the film and story quickly spins into a story about An unlikely couple starting out as strangers, then eventually becoming closer and closer, until they realize that the right one was right in front of them all along. So nothing new to be seen here in that department.

What initially made me watch "What's Your Number?" was Anna Faris (playing Ally), because she does have a knack for being very funny in films and I have always found her acting to be enjoyable, and her selection of characters is usually great as well. Her performance in "What's Your Number", however, wasn't her best performance in her career, in my opinion. It wasn't bad either...just seen her in better. Chris Evans played his role pretty much how I expected and thought he was quite charming. Farris & Evans do have good chemistry and the banter between them was pretty funny at times. The rest of the cast was a bit hit and miss. Ari Graynor doesn't add much and Blythe Danner didn't impress me as the overbearing mother. I thought some of her former boyfriends would be funnier, considering the likes of Chris Pratt, Andy Samberg, Thomas Lennon, Anthony Mackie and Aziz Ansari (just his voice) have all done some really funny films in their time but I must say they dropped the ball on what could have added some really funny moments to the film. I mean none of Flashback vignettes- except for Ally's accented encounter with a British guy (Martin Freeman)- prove to be particularly clever.

"What's Your Number" isn't a boring movie, and for the most part it does have some substance compared to other romantic comedies. However, For a comedy, there wasn't all that many laughs throughout this movie. It does have it's moments but not enough to bring it about a 2 star effort.