What's Your Number (Rhoades)

“What’s Your Number?” Plays by the Numbers

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Sometimes you suspect Hollywood has a scrambler machine that recycles old scripts. Then you can’t accuse the resulting movie of being a mindless remake. “What’s your Number?” seems like such a film.

Okay, I know it was based on a book titled “20 Times a Lady” by Karyn Bosnak, but it still has the tinge of the vaguely familiar.

In it, a young woman (Anna Faris) wonders if perhaps one of the 20 guys from her past might have been “the one” and she has passed him over. So she decides to revisit them, with the help of her hunky neighbor (Chris Evans), to find out.

You can write the script from here. A rom-com formula.

But doesn’t it remind you a bit of “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” with the genders reversed? Or “Definitely, Maybe” where a girl is searching through her dad’s past girlfriends to identify her mother?

When I turned to my ask-any-question Cha Cha iPhone app with this question, it replied, “There are actually a few movies that are like that …”

See, told ya.

“What’s Your Number?” is currently counting moviegoers at the Tropic Cinema.

One reason these romantic comedies follow formula storylines is the comfort of a satisfying ending. We like Happy Ever After. We like to see the guy get the girl (and vice versa). We like the familiar. The “correct order of things.”

You’ll remember blonde Anna Faris from “The House Bunny” and those “Scary Movie” parodies. Chris Evans more recently starred as “Captain America.” And Anna’s real-life hubby Chris Pratt has the role of Disgusting Donald in this trifling comedy.

Can’t wait to see the next version of this movie that comes out of Hollywood’s scrambler.

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]