New Favorite Guilty Pleasure Movie: What’s Your Number?

I kind of wanted to see this movie when it came out. Emphasis on the “kind of.” Therefore I never physically made it to the theater. Or the RedBox, or iTunes, or any other place where I would have to actually seek it out. Then one afternoon about a month ago, I stumbled upon it via my friend’s HBOgo. We don’t have HBO, because the Hubbster and I felt that paying for HBO just to watch the Newsroom was a little silly. Anyhoo, I was bored and felt like watching a movie. I wasn’t looking for anything particularly life-changing, and thought “Chris Evans is cute, let’s go with that.” Then I watched it four times in two weeks.

Yeah…

So, I decided to buy it. And I’ve watched it three times since then, for a grand total of… doing the math… carry the one… seven times. In a month. Don’t judge.

Stop it. I can feel you judging.

Fine, judge. Seven times is a little excessive. But I can’t help it, it’s like crack. And with the Hubbster away and my tv not constantly on ESPN, I have a lot of free time on my hands.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, Ally Darling (Anna Faris) reads an article in a magazine about how, on average, women have 10.5 lovers in their lifetime. Thinking that is incredibly low, she takes inventory and discovers that she has slept with 19 guys. Attempting to make herself feel better, she compares with her friends. Most are less than 10, and the “slut” of the group is at 13. Ouch. Then, while helping her sister taste wedding cake, she bumps into her formerly-fat ex and his gorgeous fiance. Inspired, she decides to take a look back at her exes and see if any of the others have also improved with time. After having a hard time tracking the men down, she enlists the help of her womanizing neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans). Hilarity ensues, and after many shenanigans–SPOILER ALERT–they fall for each other.

Much to my dismay, it only got 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. What is wrong with you people on there? I mean, it’s not exactly Shakespeare, and I don’t think it should win an Oscar or anything, but ya know what? I effing love this movie, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Why? I’m glad you asked 🙂

Anna Faris is actually really funny. I remember her most from her brief role as the birth mother of Monica and Chandler’s twins on Friends. She was funny there, but there wasn’t really enough screen time for me to appreciate her. In What’s Your Number? she genuinely made me laugh throughout the whole movie. There’s a scene where she’s reunited with her British ex, and throughout their relationship, she had pretended to be British, too. But here, her accent is a little rusty. I watched it with my sister this weekend (twice) and she almost peed her pants during that scene. I literally had to pause the movie because she was laughing so hard. Good job, Anna Faris.

Umm. Yes.

Chris Evans is basically naked the entire movie. Why yes, Captain America, feel free to stand naked in that hallway and cover your manly bits with that dish towel. I don’t mind one bit. He is actually a good actor, and did a lot of very subtle things throughout the movie that I loved. But I didn’t notice them until probably the 3rd time I watched it. The first two times, I was just admiring this gloriousness (Sorry, Hubbster).

Yep. Her hair extension caught fire. Classic.

It doesn’t take itself too seriously. Shock and surprise, this is a romantic comedy, and it doesn’t need to be written by Nora Ephron for me to enjoy it (though those movies are always winners). During the obligatory ‘I’ve screwed up super bad and I need to dramatically find the guy/girl to tell them that I’m sorry’ scene, Ally says “This is bull shit. Why didn’t I just wait for him at his apartment?” I love that line. It never hurts to point out that you are doing something that would be ludicrous in real life but is completely normal in a movie (side note, I just tried to spell ludicrous as ‘ludacris.’ Yes, like the rapper. What can I say? He’s kind of awesome, and it makes more sense than the real spelling).

Quality flashbacks. I love me a good flashback. It helps to give a lot of back story without too much expository dialogue. I don’t like expository dialogue. It almost always sounds fake and you can tell it’s just there for the benefit of the audience. Unless Aaron Sorkin wrote it. Then it’s awesome.

All of the past and present boyfriends are actors I recognize and love. You’ve got Joel McHale (Community, The Soup), Zachary Quinto (whom I know as Spock 2.0 because I never watched Heroes but I’m a Star Trek nerd), Chris Pratt (aka Andy from Parks & Recreation and Anna Faris’ real life husband), that guy from Reno 911 and lots of other things but I don’t know his real name, the guy from the British version of The Office–not Ricky Gervais, the Jim character–Andy Samberg (SNL), and that guy from The Adjustment Bureau who always wore a fedora. At least I think it was him… if it wasn’t it was another attractive man, and that’s just fine, too.

Ed Begley Jr. and Blythe Danner play her parents. Talk about quality actors. And I love me a good Ed Begley Jr. scene. Did you know he’s a green freak? No matter what part he’s playing, I always think of him riding his bike to generate power for his toaster. Seriously, it’s hilarious. Google it. Plus, Zachary Quinto plays an environment-obsessed vegetarian ass-hole boyfriend, so it’s a nice symmetry to Ed Begley Jr.’s real personality. Though I assume/hope that Ed Begley Jr. isn’t an ass hole.

Has ‘Ed Begley Jr.’ lost meaning yet? Ed Begley Jr. There. Now it has.

It’s rated R. It’s not that I don’t like movies if they are PG-13. I just feel like movies reflect life better when they are less restricted by language and certain topics of conversation. This may be because I am slightly inappropriate and swear like a sailor. Or it may not be. Maybe everybody’s life is more like an R-rated movie than they would care to admit, and I am completely and 100% normal. Doubtful, though.

The ‘lesson’ in this movie is “Being in love means being yourself.” Every romantic comedy has some sort of overarching theme or life lesson about love, and that’s the lesson of this movie. It also happens to be my personal belief about real love. Here comes a long story about me being a teenager, feel free to skip it and jump down to the next paragraph. I dated a guy when I was 16 that I had met while on vacation. I was an incredibly insecure 16-year-old (so, I was normal), and that means that you put on your ‘best face’ when you meet someone you like. You might censor yourself, or laugh at a joke you don’t really find funny, or pretend to be interested in something he likes. It’s just one of those things that you do. And once you’ve been dating for awhile, you might slowly let down your guard and start acting more like yourself. After a few weeks of dating this guy (aka eternity for a teenager) I did that. Then one day he said to me “You’re a lot different than you were when I first met you.” Instead of being like “Well this is me, if you don’t like it you’re not the right person for me”, I panicked and flipped the switch back. I was completely crushed when he dumped me. Probably because I kept wondering if I should have done something differently.

If you are a follower of my blog, you know that I am ridiculously in love with my husband. See: Dear Hubbster 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. One of the things I love most about him is that I have never for one second been anything but myself around him, and he loves the real, uncensored me. That, to me, is real love. So in addition to cracking my shit, this movie tugs at my heartstrings. And you should go watch it.

Now.

I’m watching it again tonight. Seriously. I have a date with my friend Cheryl. We’re watching it.