What’s Your Number is the completely predictable and formulaic tale of Ally Darling (Anna Farris), who, in the midst of a quarter-life crisis becomes obsessed with an article she read in Marie Claire that says that anyone who has any chance of finding true love can’t sleep with more than 20 men. Doing the math, she figures she’s at 19. . .and then gets really drunk and sleeps with her douchebag boss (Joel Mchale). Since her true love must be one of the people she’s already slept with, she goes about trying to track down all of her ex-lovers with the help of the literal boy next door Colin (Chris Evans). Predictably, sparks fly, and love triangles form between ex-boyfriends and Colin. . .and it’s just as predictable and by-the-numbers as it sounds.
What’s good? Anna Faris is as fun and charming as ever, and they really play up her ability to perform physical comedy. And if you couldn’t get enough of shirtless Chris Evans in Captain America. . . yeah, you might like this. A parade of amazing cameos of douchy ex-boyfriends, played by (I mentioned Joel Mchale– oh, and ladies, you get to see his butt. A LOT.), Thomas Lennon (Reno 911), Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live), Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation), Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation, Human Giant), Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, Heroes), Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, Sherlock, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Office [UK]). So if you’re a fan of NBC’s Thursday night lineup like I am, then you’ll be liking these cameos. We also get some great supporting performances from Blythe Danner as the mother, Ari Graynor (Fringe) as the sister who is getting married, and Eliza Coupe (Scrubs) as a bridesmaid/friend. It’s like they looked at this script and said, “well, there’s not much here. But maybe if we throw enough talented people at it the movie will be passable.” Mission Accomplished.
And in a world where Bridesmaids hadn’t already tread over much of this same thematic material, this would be a breath of fresh air. Wow– an R-rated chick flick! But now it, unfortunately, seems like a less fresh take on all of it. The completely predictable script and story don’t help.
You know who else doesn’t help? Ed Begley Jr. Now, I love Ed Begley. Like in “>this clip from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job about the Cinco phone. Or his reality show where he descends into madness as he tries to sort out his recycling and find organic fertilizer. But in this I think he’s trying to emulate his beloved trees by giving a completely wooden performance. Perhaps he was trying to lower the production’s carbon footprint by telecommuting– by phoning in a performance. Maybe the craft services table was only vegetarian rather than full vegan, or they used non-locally sourced produce. I’m not sure of the reason, but he was terrible. C’est la vie. I’ll go back and watch his great work on Arrested Development or one of the Richard Guest movies.
I also fully disclose that I’ve seen A LOT of movies this past week at Fantastic Fest here in Austin, so my radar may be a little off because of the huge variance in quality of said genre films. But this was just ho-hum.
But there are going to be people who really like this movie. If that’s the case, please check out this deal– you can get the paperback of the book the film is based on AND a movie poster signed by the cast!!!! That’s almost worth it- again, because of how amazing this cast is.
2 1/2 stars.