Anna Faris has been in a lot of good movies over the past few years - I enjoyed her in The House Bunny, for example - but What's Your Number? makes me wonder if she only did the movie because she needed a paycheck. WYN looked like it was going to be a cute chick flick, but instead took a turn for the worse and employed dumb raunchy comedy like far too many movies these days.
Ally Darling (Anna Faris, "Take Me Home Tonight") has a bad track record when it comes to guys. After breaking up with her last boyfriend, Rick (Zachary Quinto, TV's "Heroes"), a vegetarian bicyclist, she realizes that her sister's wedding is soon approaching and she needs a date for it. After subsequently getting fired from her job - perhaps because she was late every day, but it's never actually said - Ally reads an article in a women's magazine entitled "What's Your Number?" which says that 96% of women who have had twenty or more lovers end up not finding someone to settle down with. In a panic, she decides to find her exes, hoping that they have aged well, so that she can get back together with one of them and not go over the coveted "20" number.
Ally enlists the help of her neighbor (the always handsome Chris Evans, "Captain America: The First Avenger") to help investigate, and together they meet up with some of her exes. Her sister (Ari Graynor, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"), after all, is about to get married to one of her old high school boyfriends; why can't Ally do the same with one of her exes? The journey she embarks on, however, is mostly cringe-worthy and only has sporadic humorous scenes.
The two positive things about this film are Chris Evans, whose charismatic smile fits into any movie, and the flashback scenes. One of Ally's exes, "Disgusting Donald" (her real-life husband, Chris Pratt), used to be obese but is now trim, and Ally could definitely see herself dating him again ... except he's engaged. Another ex, Gerry Perry (an almost unrecognizable Andy Samberg), the boy to whom Ally lost her virginity, is a puppeteer, which makes for a really awkward (albeit funny) flashback scene.
No, don't see this film. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is crap, and this is coming from someone that loves most "chick flicks." There are a few one-liners that were funny, but I felt that Faris was trying too hard to be the "quirky girl-next-door" type (see: Zooey Deschanel in the recent TV show "New Girl"). The movie opens with a ton of raunchy dialogue, which would be fine if it was actually funny; but once Faris utters the sentence "I'm not letting anyone else into my heart - or my vagina - ever again!", you can tell the movie is going to go downhill from there.
What's Your Number? is in theaters today, September 30th, and is rated R with a runtime of 106 minutes.
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Liz Parker is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan. She currently works as an Assistant Medical Editor for a pathology website. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films