By David Seymour (Contributor) – Email
Date Posted: October 6, 2011
Print Edition: October 5, 2011
Have you ever started watching the first five minutes of a movie and thought to yourself: have I seen this before? Watching the first couple of scenes of What’s Your Number? was a déjà-vu experience. The first scene opens with the quirky Ally Darling (Anna Ferris) clandestinely sneaking off to the bathroom and retouching her makeup while her so-called boyfriend dozes obliviously. After beautifying herself, Ally slips discreetly back under the covers until the moment her boyfriend wakes up and asks her “Why do you always look so good in the morning?” Does this set-up sound eerily similar to the opening of this summer’s hit comedy Bridesmaids? I thought so too.
In fact What’s Your Number? strikes many suspiciously similar chords with Bridesmaids. Set in Boston, our cute blonde heroine Ally Darling’s life is slightly dysfunctional: she works at a blasé office job only to find herself swiftly sacked, her younger sister is getting married, and she’s getting older without much success in her romantic endeavours. Sound a little similar to Kirsten Wiig’s character Annie in Bridesmaids? You get the idea.
After being fired for being late for work, Ally, whilst on the subway, comes across a Marie-Claire magazine stating that the average number of partners women sleep with in their lifetime is approximately 10, a slightly smaller number than her 19. In the following scene, Ally, who has drunk a little too much after making her startling discovery, embarrasses herself in front of the reception at her sister’s engagement party, giving a sincere, but off-colour toast (need I make another connection?). All of this is much to the chagrin of her controlling, yet uncouth mother (Blythe Danner), who reminds me of a watered-down version of Susan’s mother from Seinfeld. During the after-party, one of her friends warns her that if a woman sleeps with over 20 men, she is less likely to marry later on. From this point, Ally swears an oath: she cannot sleep with over 20 men so the next man that she sleeps with must be her husband.
After a making the error of sleeping with her ex-boss, Ally has the revelation that she must track down her ex-boyfriends and rekindle a relationship with one of them so that she won’t be breaking her 20 men limit. In desperation, Ally then forms an alliance with her hunky next-door neighbour Colin (Chris Evans) to whom she will offer her place as a hideout from his one-night stands in exchange for helping her with her crusade to track down her exes. Upon meeting Ally’s vulgar, rough-around-the-edges but clearly attractive opposite (Chris Evans’ is featured topless in half of his scenes, forcing us to admire his well-developed pectoral muscles) the movie begins to quickly fall even further into the category of cliché and formulaic.
Although Ally is meant to be the awkward, blundering-yet-endearing Bridget Jonesian heroine of this story, there is undeniably something lacking with her character: she is not that funny. Farris’ comedic timing and facial expressions fail to translate on screen, resulting with the impression that she is trying to be funny rather than just being funny. Although this may be due to a combination with the screenwriters’ lacklustre writing and Farris’ ineptitude; either way, Ally’s character fails to charm us with her so-called pathetic life. While we all enjoyed revelling in the misfortunes of Bridget Jones and Annie Walker (Bridesmaids) who are convincingly portrayed as pathetic and unfortunate, Ally’s well-to-do background and her petulant “problem” of trying not to sleep with another guy comes across as irritating, not comedic. And Colin, rather than being the understated gentleman, simply comes across as pervy and unctuous. The combination of Colin’s juvenile behaviour and Ally’s unnecessary pity party help convince us that the two characters are worth despising near the end of the film; to the point that we simply don’t care if they end up together (which they do of course). The movie reaches an anti-climatic moment when Ally, whist giving her sister’s toast, realizes that she is in love with Colin, after finally realizing that he is her “Mister Right.” We are then forced to watch Ally run around Boston, wedding-to-wedding in search for Colin playing with his band in an endless number of tedious and redundant scenes. By the time she finds him, our attention is lost and we are feeling ambivalent when the pair finally reconcile.
Although What’s Your Number? contains a couple of genuinely funny scenes, the film is rife with ribald and physical based humour.
It is another heart-over-head romantic comedy which fails to satiate one’s need for the comforting romantic comedy. If you want to see an explicit, female-oriented movie which deserves your attention on a Saturday night, my suggestion would be to skip this one and rent Bridesmaids instead; it’s practically the same movie, only better.
