What's Your Number? (2011)

I saw What's Your Number? for the first time before the blog, when my obsession with Chris Evans started. I really enjoyed it at the time. Because of the perving going on on Twitter lately, I decided to rewatch it but I wasn't as impressed. With the film, I mean. Evans is still perfect. 

Anyhoo, as if getting fired wasn't enough, on her way home, thirty-something Ally Darling (Anna Faris) reads a Marie Claire article stating that women who have slept with more than twenty guys don't get married. She writes down all the guys she slept with and realizes she is a nineteen. So she decides that the next man that she sleeps with will be her husband, but she screws that up by sleeping with her disgusting former boss (Joel McHale). She then enlists her neighbor, the womanizer Colin Shea (Chris Evans), to track down her ex-boyfriends.

As you can tell, What's Your Number? is the kind of movie we all have seen before. It's got the overused plot of two strangers getting closer and closer until they realize they've had the one in front of them the whole time. The writers, however, tried to make it a little more interesting by adding the sexual partners number thing and by focusing on the woman's obsession to marry one of her ex-boyfriends. The ex-boyfriends reunion though isn't enough to keep the film going. To "fix" that, the writers added some subplots that often take away the focus from the main storyline.

But it's not much of a big deal since Anna Faris manages to carry the film decently. She is not given a great character to work with --Ally couldn't get more clichéd and stereotyped than this. She sneaks out of bed to fix makeup, hair, and breath before the man awakes, and she says and does a lot of stupid things, not to mention how often she states the obvious-- but she brings so much energy to the role, you'll end up liking her. Even though, unlike her ex-husband, Chris Pratt, who is also in this film, she is not good at comedy. 

20th Century Fox
Chris Evans does a way better job though. He is a slacker and a womanizer, a character a woman should despise and yet I could not help but like him. Not only, he is also incredibly charming and genuinely funny. And he has a pretty good chemistry with Faris (seriously, I need him to look at me like that). 

Though it works decently as a romance as you'll end you rooting for Ally and Colin (and probably wish you were Ally), What's Your Number? doesn't always work as a comedy. There are some funny bits, but sometimes the jokes, most of which are crude, and foul, just fall flat.

4 comments :

  1. I hate that Pratt was actually funny here. And who cares about the script when Evans is stripping while shooting hoops. Good God. That was the closest to porn this kind of films can get

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    1. I remember the first time I watched this, all I could think was please take off those boxers. Or just throw away that freaking towel!

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  2. It's been a while since I've seen that film. It's not a great film but Chris Evans is always on point and he is a better actor than I think people give him credit for. He's handsome yet there's so much more than that. Danny Boyle said that Evans is someone he was surprised by as he believes Evans can do Shakespeare and knock it out of the park.

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    1. I agree that Evans is an overrated actor. His portrayal of Steve Rogers/Captain America is the proof of that. Easily the best performance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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