Film Review: What’s Your Number

About the film

What’s Your Number is a romantic comedy film that was released on DVD on 30th January of this year. What’s Your Number is based on the book "Twenty Times a Lady" by Karyn Bosnak. It is rated 15 due to sexual content and bad language. The uncut version of the film has a run time of 112 minutes while the regular version is 106 minutes.

Plot

On her way home after losing her job, Ally Darling comes across a magazine article entitled "What's Your Number?", which asks the reader to calculate how many people she has slept with. Realizing that her number is double the average, Ally decides to track down all of her ex-boyfriends in the hope that one of them will have grown into the man she wants to marry, and therefore the number of men she has slept with will never have to increase. With the help of her womanizing neighbour Colin Shea, she manages to find all of her exes, but things do not quite work out the way she had expected.

What I thought

When it comes to romantic comedies, there isn’t much that hasn’t already been done before. It takes quite a lot to come up with something original nowadays and when I saw the trailer for this film, I thought that this could be it!

I actually really like Anna Faris and her having the lead role was a big reason for me wanting to watch this film. I know a lot of people don’t like her but I have loved her in everything I have seen of hers so far, especially The House Bunny. Here, Faris plays Ally who has a lot of relationship troubles. She’s always trying to be the perfect girl for whomever she is seeing but her ex’s are all losers. Faris is really perky and upbeat as Ally and the character was really likeable. Due to the plot and Ally having already slept with more than the American average, she turns a bad situation into something funny and something that I’m sure a lot of people can relate to.

Playing the leading man is Chris Evans. I have never seen in anything before, although I do know that he is Captain America. Evans is a great counterpart to Faris and the two have great chemistry together. He is funny and charming as Ally’s neighbour Colin and maybe a little bit sleazy at the same time. Overall though, I liked him as a character as you could tell there was a lot more to him than could be seen. Also, we get to see a whole lot of Evan’s amazing body so that obviously made me happy.

The dialogue throughout was cheesy and a bit predictable but it didn’t stop me from laughing for the most part. Faris is great at comedy and she does just as well in this film. Ally gets put into some crazy situation while she is on the hunt for her ex-boyfriends and this is where most of the comedy comes from. Yes, some of these things could have been done better or been more inventive but they weren’t bad at all. I would have liked to have seen more from the ex’s as most of them come and go in a couple of minutes. Some characters that could have been amazing are lacking screen time which was a shame.

The plot was something different and new for a romantic comedy and it made a lovely change. Instead of trying to find a husband the normal way, Ally works backwards through her ex’s and I know I have never seen this done before. While this was original about the film, it wasn’t overly amazing. The outcome was predictable and there weren’t enough major problems put in Ally’s way when there could have been. However, it was interesting to see what lengths she would go to and to find out what her ex’s were really like.

Overall, What’s Your Number is a good romantic comedy that is a bit different from others out there. It was funny but not hilarious with some nice romance.