Movie Review: What's Your Number?
Notorious for The House Bunny and Scary Movie, I was expecting an awkward, unfunny and unfortunately un-relatable Anna Faris along with a frequently naked Chris Evans in What’s Your Number? Well, I obviously got the latter. But Anna Faris’ comedic and adorable personality actually made this rom-com decent.
The film opens up with a series of headlines from womens’ magazines targeting new studies about dating. Then we see Ally Darling (Anna Faris) in bed with a man that really isn’t looking for anything serious. Moreover, she loses her job and spends the rest of her time helping plan her younger sister’s wedding. According to a nonexistent Marie Claire article, the average number of people a woman sleeps with before finding ‘the one’ is 10.5. It also says that 96% of women who have over 20 lovers can’t find a husband. Ally makes sure not to go over 20, but celebrates too hard and accidentally sleeps with the boss that just fired her.
Then there’s the hunky guy across the hall Colin (Chris Evans) that hides in Ally’s apartment while he waits for his victims to leave. With her loveless past haunting her and her morbid future awaiting, Ally’s set on keeping her number at twenty and decides to re-visit all her ex-boyfriends. Of course this isn’t a one-man job. Ally says to Colin, “You help me track down my exes and I’ll help you escape yours.” The two set out to find nineteen guys based only on names and locations (with the help of Google).
Besides the fact that there is literally no way to make this movie sound less cheesy, Anna Faris knows how to make people laugh. The worse the script, the more she excels. Whether she’s faking a British accent or making a toast in bare feet holding a champagne bottle, she’s undeniably funny. Moreover, the sexual tension between Ally and Colin is deliciously unnerving. From skinny dipping to playing strip horse at an abandoned basketball court, you’re just counting the minutes for the whole Friends With Benefits plot to thicken.
Surprise, surprise! Colin falls for Ally when she almost gets hitched with her ex, who is now a gay politician looking for a beard to take him to presidency. They finally kiss, but don’t have sex, reminding me of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in Crazy, Stupid Love. The one girl he couldn’t get on the first night turns into the last girl he’ll ever be with. All of a sudden Colin is behaving like a boyfriend, but Ally can’t see him as an ideal life partner with everything she already knows about him.
The most realistic moment in the entire film is when Ally accidentally takes Colin’s phone and finds out that he’s been keeping one of her exes away from her. Jake Adam, aka ‘the one that got away’ is what you call the perfect man that Colin refuses to compete with. She asks Colin if he’s heard from Jake and after he lies to her face she kicks him out. Ally ends up dating Jake and taking him to the wedding only to tell him she’s in love with someone else. “I’m a jobless whore who’s slept with twenty guys and I want to be with a guy who understands me.” After all, who else would she end up with rather than a struggling musician-type?
This romantic comedy was saved by Anna Faris’ brilliant comedic talent and her electrifying chemistry with Chris Evans.