Movie Monday - What's Your Number?

There are times when you just need to go to a fluffy movie. Something that is funny, maybe a little raunchy in places, has attractive people, and never gets too serious.

I was having one of those weeks last week, so when we were debating between movies and had to choose between the spy thriller, the cancer comedy, or the fluffy “chick flick,” well… I voted for the chick flick: “What’s Your Number?”

The premise of the movie is pretty basic: A woman who reads the advice columns in magazines to make decisions about her life comes across one that says that women aren’t supposed to have more than 20 partners in their lifetimes. Since she’s recently become unemployed, and since her across-the-hall neighbor just happens to be the son of a police detective, she decides to stop right where she is and go back through her reject pile to see if she can find anyone she should take a second look at.

Okay. Wow. That sounds like either a really boring, really contrived, or really flat-out bad movie. But, I swear, it kind of worked.

You’ve got Anna Faris as the unemployed sister of a bride-to-be, and Chris Evans (known for being a comic book superhero in “Captain America” and the Fantastic Four movies) as the slutty – and, yes, hunky – neighbor with the heart of gold. Throw in Blythe Danner as the mother who wants perfect grandkids, and you’ve actually got an interesting movie.

Better yet, since a whole section of the movie revolves around the main character going back and finding (or reliving) moments with her exes, it’s kind of like a series of short films. They’ve got their own time periods. They’ve got their own stories. They’ve got their own accents (yes, accents). And, as such, they also have a great supporting cast.

So, yes, the plot is kind of obvious. And you sort of know what is probably going to happen for much of the movie. But, well, sometimes when a movie does just what you want it to, it’s a good thing. And there are unexpected moments, too, when you find out layers of each of the characters that you didn’t know would be there in a movie like this.

Overall rating: A. I was going to go with an A-, but the movie gets a few extra points for the fact that it didn’t waste any funny scenes in the Trailers. In fact, one of the prominent scenes in most of the trailers isn’t even in the movie. Love that.