Film Review: What's Your Number?

Upon reading an article which says that "96% of women who've been with twenty or more lovers can't find a husband", perpetual singleton Ally (Faris) makes a commitment not to add to her total. Instead Ally decides to track down her twenty ex-partners in the hope she may have overlooked Mr. Right way back when. Across the hallway lives resident man-whore Colin (Evans) whom Ally employs to help find said exes on account that he knows how to use Facebook better than her.

What's Your Number? is a mashup of recent romcoms like Bridesmaids and Friends With Benefits featuring a girl unlucky in love who has some bizarre secret creative talent which turns out to be her true calling in life and a big soppy 'you're the one' speech at the end. You can expect every cliche in the book here and the outcome is inevitable where from the first moment Colin appears onscreen you just know he'll be lucky number 21. To be fair to this however it does have its comic moments in spite of its banality. There are laughs to be had as Ally ambushes her ex lovers, particularly one involving a puppeteer played by Lonely Island star Andy Samberg. However Ally's trip down memory lane does nothing toward understanding where she went wrong in the past nor teach her any lessons about her own inability to form lasting relationships. Indeed, one might expect a little introspection from a film of this nature.

Still, Faris is charming enough with her infectious enthusiasm but it is the permanently topless Evans who injects most into proceedings. While both are likeable, their blossoming romance dogmatically follows every trope in the genre. Perhaps the best thing about What's Your Number? however is how ironically nonchalant it is, despite its rigid adherence to the romantic comedy formula. Yes, it's stale, but it remains breezy and light mostly throughout. That is until things start to get particularly tedious toward the end where a wedding setting sees proceedings devolve into a shameless chick flick as Ally must choose between two handsome men. It also goes on for far too long where the most galling number of all is not how many men Ally has slept with but the film's runtime.

While this might strike a chord with the modern woman's concerns, this is more trite than anything else. Ultimately however it is inoffensive and while there's a twinkle from its affable stars, the concept has been done to death. As such this is more a disposable giggle than a self-affirming simulacrum for all the single ladies out there.

Film Review: Take Me Home Tonight

Society expects your life to follow a path of orderly progression; finish school, get a career and have a family, only to eventually retire and be supported by the next generation who will do exactly the same. However, this traditional cycle appears to be breaking as young twenty-somethings delay the transition from childhood to adulthood. Sociologists have dubbed this phenomena the 'changing timetable for adulthood'. It is this tenet which Take Me Home Tonight flirts with, a film that has been shelved since 2007 allegedly for its portrayal of recreational cocaine use.

Matt Franklin (Grace) has just graduated from MIT with a degree in engineering. Returning home to LA and living with his parents, Matt works in a video-rental store while he waits for his future to clarify itself. When he re-encounters his unrequited high-school crush, Tori (Palmer), he lies about working at Goldman Sachs to impress her - despite there not being a branch in LA. Still smitten, Matt follows her to an end-of-summer party hosted by his sister's (Faris) yuppie boyfriend, accompanied by his derelict best-friend, Barry (Fogler), in what promises to be one hell of a night.

At its heart, Take Me Home Tonight is about a kid so frightened of putting a foot wrong in life that he collapses into a ball of inertia. It's not necessarily a new concept; eighties classics such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club, and more recently Adventureland, hit upon similar themes of directionless youth. However, there are a couple of particularly poignant scenes which hit closer to home than others have done. Take Me Home Tonight fails though on the understanding that, foremost, this is supposed to be a comedy. That's not to say it isn't 'funny', but it generates more of a subdued amusement rather than continuous laugh-out-loud moments. This is mainly due to a dialogue which is not as sharp as it perhaps could have been and a poor execution of otherwise sound scenarios.

Grace and Palmer don't sparkle, but they do nonetheless make a good pairing in that generic kind of way. Their relationship is about as formulaic as you can get in a rom-com, falling prey of that tried and tested device of romance, crisis and reconciliation. It is a grand tradition in films of this nature for the main lead to engineer a ridiculous scenario to impress a love interest, only for the end of the second act to have that obligatory moment of confession. Cue the third act of trying to save lost love. As for Matt's comic foil, Fogler is more than adept at the bawdy role. However, you do get the sense that the part of 'fat cretin' is becoming an overcrowded market with the likes of Jonah Hill and Zach Galifianakis having pretty much made the role their own. How many more of these will Hollywood churn out?

Upon first glance this might be a film that will appeal to the nostalgic forty-something demographic. In reality however it is not a film for those brought up immersed in eighties pop-culture. Rather it is a 'nostalgia'-fest for those who missed the boat the first time round and who now spend their time in clubs which put on 80s retro nights. Indeed, what really holds this film together is its induced nostalgia riveted with a fantastic soundtrack. Choices such as Kim Carnes' 'Bette Davis Eyes' and Duran Duran's 'Hungry Like The Wolf' do brilliantly to work succinctly with the mood and time of the film. Ironically however it doesn't feature the Eddie Money hit after which it was named.

But it takes more than a great soundtrack to make a great movie. To be fair, Take Me Home Tonight does well to capture the eighties yuppie culture of cocaine, fast cars and coveted materialism. It's setting and themes may well resonate with the twenty-somethings of today, but it remains precariously balanced on the edge of failure as a comedy.