Film Review: What's Your Number?

What’s Your Number? Rated MA 15+ (strong sexual references). 106 minutes. Directed by Mark Mylod. Screenplay by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden. Based on the novel 20 Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnak.

While Ally Darling (Anna Faris) is travelling home having been unceremoniously sacked from her marketing job, she reads a magazine article informing her that women who have had more than 20 sexual partners rarely end up happily married to the love of their life. Determined to be happily married like her younger sister Daisy (Whip It’s Ari Graynor) is about to be, Ally enlists the help of her neighbour Colin (Chris Evans) to track down her 19 ex-lovers in the hope that one of them will have become her Mr Right.

One thing is an absolute certainty. It will be a race to the best seats for fans of Mr Evans (Captain America) and the sparkling Ms Faris (Scary Movie) as they cavort (mostly in various degrees of undress) in this gleefully smutty, opportunistic romantic comedy that also – somewhat strangely – happens to be a laughter-free zone.

Like its step-sister Bridesmaids, What’s Your Number? focuses on the travails of an under-achieving young woman in the lead-up to a big family occasion with all its attendant tension and potential for chaos. It's an increasingly disturbing trend, and the wedding sequences (with Blythe Danner chewing up the scenery as the girls’ mum, Ava) all rather regretfully play out with a musty whiff of familiarity – and long before the film grinds to a halt, we are utterly convinced that there is a much better movie struggling to get out from underneath all the screenplay’s layers of contrivance.

What saves it from being a frightfully predictable bore is Ms Faris’s immensely likable Ally daring to re-visit her ex-lovers and Mr Evans’s smooth-as-silk, struggling muso Colin who, having been the master of the one-night-stand, finds himself falling in love with this creative, determined and optimistic young woman across the hall. The film’s best scenes are certainly when this joyful, jaded but charismatic pair are at their unrestrained and romantic best – which, sadly, is still not enough to make it truly memorable.

Pictured: Chris Evans and Anna Faris in What's Your Number?

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.