Publications
Partners
What it's about:
Ally Darling (Anna Faris) reads a magazine article which claims that women who have slept with more than 10.5 men will never find true love. Alarmed to find that her own "number" is well above this, Ally vows to not have sex again until she has tracked down her 19 previous lovers, in the hopes that one of them will turn out to be The One. Helping Ally on her quest is her hot neighbour Colin (Chris Evans), a musician who has had more than his share of partners.
What we thought:
Somewhere out there is the perfect movie role for the unique and charming talents of Anna Faris, but What's Your Number very definitely is not it.
Stuck with the frankly offensive premise that women who have slept with more men than the American average (10.5) will never find a husband, Anna's Ally spends the movie hell-bent on keeping her number constant while tracking down her 19 previous partners in the hopes that he will see what he's missing and make an honest woman out of her.
Lucky for Ally her new neighbour Colin is a hunky layabout musician, who somehow escapes the "whore" judgements that haunt Ally, even though he beds a new woman practically every night of the week. He is also a crack investigator and offers to help her find these elusive exes if she lets him use her apartment to hide from his conquests the morning after.
At the same time, Ally's younger sister Daisy is planning her wedding and the event causes old tensions between their divorced parents to flare up. But foremost in Ally's mind is finding Jake Adams, the one who got away and the answer to her "number" dilemma.
With so much on its plate, What's Your Number opts for the path of least resistance and plays out as a very generic romantic-slapstick comedy, with Faris' increasingly waxy appearance working itself into a froth to make the half-hearted humour work. She's always been a delightfully quirky comedic actress, making silly films like House Bunny and the Scary Movies spark more than they probably deserved to on paper, but she deserves better than what this movie, which she also executive produced, can offer.
There's some fun bits as Ally contrives to meet up with her exes, showcasing great cameo appearances from The Hobbit's Martin Freeman, The Hurt Locker star Anthony Mackie, Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg and Faris' real-life husband Chris Pratt who plays Disgusting Donald - her once-obese ex who's not so disgusting anymore and is about to marry a hot rocket scientist.
Other supporting roles are wasted, particularly Blythe Danner, who plays Ally and Daisy's high maintenance society mother. She's both harmless and a vapid mother-from-hell and Danner finds herself stuck between a rock and a hard place, looking frazzled throughout.
Of course there is little doubt where this movie is headed and it takes longer than it ought to for Ally to figure it all out - never a good thing when your audience is miles ahead of you and getting bored. To keep attention levels going, director Mark Mylod makes sure his cast show lots of skin and we're treated to titillating scenes of strip basketball and skinny dipping when what this movie really needed was a script with some bite.
What's Your Number doesn't offer any real commentary on its prejudicial premise. Ally even calls herself a whore and just goes along with it, cowering under the weight of this cursed word's implications. That's no way to treat a lady - not even in a bit of throwaway entertainment like this.
Ally Darling (Anna Faris) reads a magazine article which claims that women who have slept with more than 10.5 men will never find true love. Alarmed to find that her own "number" is well above this, Ally vows to not have sex again until she has tracked down her 19 previous lovers, in the hopes that one of them will turn out to be The One. Helping Ally on her quest is her hot neighbour Colin (Chris Evans), a musician who has had more than his share of partners.
What we thought:
Somewhere out there is the perfect movie role for the unique and charming talents of Anna Faris, but What's Your Number very definitely is not it.
Stuck with the frankly offensive premise that women who have slept with more men than the American average (10.5) will never find a husband, Anna's Ally spends the movie hell-bent on keeping her number constant while tracking down her 19 previous partners in the hopes that he will see what he's missing and make an honest woman out of her.
Lucky for Ally her new neighbour Colin is a hunky layabout musician, who somehow escapes the "whore" judgements that haunt Ally, even though he beds a new woman practically every night of the week. He is also a crack investigator and offers to help her find these elusive exes if she lets him use her apartment to hide from his conquests the morning after.
At the same time, Ally's younger sister Daisy is planning her wedding and the event causes old tensions between their divorced parents to flare up. But foremost in Ally's mind is finding Jake Adams, the one who got away and the answer to her "number" dilemma.
With so much on its plate, What's Your Number opts for the path of least resistance and plays out as a very generic romantic-slapstick comedy, with Faris' increasingly waxy appearance working itself into a froth to make the half-hearted humour work. She's always been a delightfully quirky comedic actress, making silly films like House Bunny and the Scary Movies spark more than they probably deserved to on paper, but she deserves better than what this movie, which she also executive produced, can offer.
There's some fun bits as Ally contrives to meet up with her exes, showcasing great cameo appearances from The Hobbit's Martin Freeman, The Hurt Locker star Anthony Mackie, Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg and Faris' real-life husband Chris Pratt who plays Disgusting Donald - her once-obese ex who's not so disgusting anymore and is about to marry a hot rocket scientist.
Other supporting roles are wasted, particularly Blythe Danner, who plays Ally and Daisy's high maintenance society mother. She's both harmless and a vapid mother-from-hell and Danner finds herself stuck between a rock and a hard place, looking frazzled throughout.
Of course there is little doubt where this movie is headed and it takes longer than it ought to for Ally to figure it all out - never a good thing when your audience is miles ahead of you and getting bored. To keep attention levels going, director Mark Mylod makes sure his cast show lots of skin and we're treated to titillating scenes of strip basketball and skinny dipping when what this movie really needed was a script with some bite.
What's Your Number doesn't offer any real commentary on its prejudicial premise. Ally even calls herself a whore and just goes along with it, cowering under the weight of this cursed word's implications. That's no way to treat a lady - not even in a bit of throwaway entertainment like this.
