Sassy, sexy, raunchy, with just a tincture of sentiment, WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? (M) is a welcome surprise package amidst the crass, gross offerings that Hollywood usually serves up as comedy.

Anna Faris stars as Ally Darling who on the eve of her little sister, Daisy’s (Ari Graynor) wedding, calculates how many copulation sleeping partners she’s had and decides to remain celibate until she retraces her recreational pillow partners in an endeavour to discover if one of them was truly “The One”.

Recruiting her root rat neighbour, Colin, an Internet literate with sleuthing skills, (Chris Evans) to help track down her past sleeping, a process of elimination becomes a procession of humiliations played to hilarious comic effect.

Based on Karyn Bosnak’s novel, TWENTY TIMES A LADY, screenwriters Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden have fashioned a fun, fast flowing narrative that focuses on Faris’s fetching charm and comedic talents.

Like her 2008 film, THE HOUSE BUNNY, Faris executive produced this picture herself and her creative paws are all over it.

Apart from the aforementioned Chris Evans and Ari Graynor, WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? boasts a bona fide buffet of supporting actors.
Blythe Danner’s turn as Faris’s mother is a bravura of comedy and pathos and Ed Begley Junior as the father similarly hits the spot.
As one of “the numbers”, Martin Freeman shines in an episode that transcends into a fab parody of MY FAIR LADY.

Yes, WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? plays by the numbers in the rom-com roulette, but in the hands of such an attractive cast and under the perfectly paced direction of Mark Mylod, it’s a very winning formula indeed, and a lot better than the ordinary, so called comedy, crapshoot.

Place your bets.

© Richard Cotter

13th October, 2011