What's Your Number?


3/4

Starring: Anna Faris, Chris Evans, Ari Graynor, Blythe Danner

Rated R for Sexual Content and Language

“What’s Your Number” is a curious romantic comedy.  It’s not particularly funny, but it is romantic (odd, since most members of the genre are the reverse).  The humor is too broad or simply not funny, but the leads do have chemistry, and that’s what saves the movie.

Ally Darling (Faris) is having a really bad day.  Her latest relationship just ended, she just got laid off, and her sister Daisy (Graynor) is getting married.  Wondering where her life went wrong, she reads an article that says a woman who has had 20 or more relationships will never find Mr. Right.  Ally is at 19, so not wanting to doom herself to spinsterhood, she sets out to find all of her exes to see which one of them is “the one.”  But she needs help.  So, she makes a deal with the devil of sorts: her neighbor across the hall.  Colin (Evans) is a lothario who needs to escape his one-night-stands the morning after.  She’ll let him use her apartment to hide out if he helps her track down her exes.  But what she doesn’t realize is that he may be the one she has been looking for all along.

Although Faris and Evans have demonstrated comic aptitude in previous films (Faris in the “Scary Movie” franchise and Evans in “Not Another Teen Movie”), neither has what one would call “dramatic range.”  They can’t hold a movie up when the material is flat, and that’s what makes the first half a bit of a trial to get through.  It’s watchable to be sure, but not very compelling.  However, they have something that can’t be faked: chemistry.  They go well together, and we want them to get together in the end.  When the second half rolls around and the film concentrates on that, the film takes off.

The supporting cast is made up of bit parts by young character actors, plus Blythe Danner.  Aside from Danner (who plays Ally’s overbearing mother) and Graynor (who is luminous), no one but Ally or Colin is on screen for very long.  Had they been better known, it would be a game of spot the star.  The lone exception is Dave Annable, who plays the “maybe true love.”  Although he’s on screen for a few short scenes, Annable has the natural charisma and talent to make them memorable (he already proved this in the otherwise wretched “Little Black Book”).  Someone please get him a role as a romantic lead.

It’s unfair to lay all the blame at director Mark Mylod’s feet.  Although he has little grasp of comic timing, he’s saddled with a script whose jokes are limp at best.  The gags are obvious and display little edge; two things that are a must for a comedy like this.  And for a movie that is trying to tap into the market that made “Bridesmaids” such a hit, the movie is surprisingly tame.  The most outrageous thing that happens in the movie is seeing Chris Evans nude except for a towel covering his groin (one wonders if he signed a no-nudity clause in his contract).

Ultimately, it’s the romantic second half that earns the film a recommendation.  A weak recommendation, but a recommendation nonetheless.

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