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This uninspiring romantic comedy plods from one superficial moment to the next, telling us nothing we haven’t been told before and showing us nothing we haven’t seen. The concept is weak, the humor banal and the leading lady fails to distract us from the flawed execution of this unlikely tale.
Ally Darling (Anna Faris) is single and soon to be a bridesmaid to her sister, Daisy (Ari Graynor). Just before the wedding Ally reads an article in a magazine that warns females who have had 20 sexual relationships that they have missed their chance at true love. As Ally’s conquests total 20, she decides to reconnect with her exes in the hope that she will find Mr. Right, thus avoiding the consequence of going over the 20 benchmark. However, her ex-lovers prove elusive to locate and she enlists the help of her neighbor Colin (Chris Evans), who is a charmer but also an inveterate womanizer.
The set up of this film presents the first in a series of plot holes that are all big enough to drive a 10-ton truck through. As we all know, social networking has exploded and it’s not possible Ally couldn’t find any of her exes online, but as the plot calls for her to be inextricably bound to Colin, this reality is dismissed, which not only insults the audience’s intelligence but also makes it painfully obvious that Colin is the one Ally will end up with. This neighborly relationship becomes a double whammy when, in the finale, Ally chases all over town searching for her suddenly-no-longer-womanizing love interest when all she had to do was go home and wait for him to return. She actually mutters these exact words to herself as she catapults over a wall, which obviously the three writers decided works perfectly as a hole filler but is in fact a prime example of how fatal group thinking can really be.
Not only does this film lack originality, but it has an opening scene identical to that in the recent blockbuster, Bridesmaids. In both these movies the star wakes up in bed with a guy, tip-toes to the bathroom, touches up her make-up and then slips back into bed, feigning sleep when the guy wakes up. In Bridesmaids this was extremely funny, in What’s Your Number it falls flat, as do all the other ideas that made their debut in the previously released Something Borrowed, Rachel’s Getting Married and Margo at the Wedding. As if this film doesn’t already have enough relics, memories of Rocky are stirred when the two lovers visit an empty stadium at night. This scene couldn’t be any more contrived if the sub-title “this is when the lovers discover they like each other” had been added, which might sound ridiculous but that’s only because you haven’t seen the film.
When a project like this gets made, it begs the questions ‘How?’, and when a B list actress lands the starring role, the question is ‘How come?’ On researching the cast, it appears Anna Feris made a couple of guest appearances on the TV series Entourage, which were directed by Mark Mylod, who is also the Director of this film. It’s glaringly obvious that Miss Feris is no Jennifer Aniston so it’s extremely lucky that this is not holding her back and that her and the Director ‘bonded’ so well when she was strutting her stuff on the set of Entourage.
RELEASE DATES
Belarus – 29 September 2011
Kazakhstan – 29 September 2011
Russia – 29 September 2011
Estonia – 30 September 2011
Ireland – 30 September 2011
Sweden – 30 September 2011
UK – 30 September 2011
USA – 30 September 2011
France – 5 October 2011
Hong Kong – 6 October 2011
Malaysia – 13 October 2011
Singapore – 13 October 2011
Italy – 14 October 2011
Brazil – 21 October 2011
Norway – 21 October 2011
Portugal – 27 October 2011
Finland – 28 October 2011
Hungary – 10 November 2011
Lithuania – 11 November 2011
Poland – 10 February 2012
Germany – 16 February 2012