What's Your Number?

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How second rate? The first scene is lifted entirely from Bridesmaids' opening gambit: Faris' kook wakes up next to a hottie, only to sneak into the bathroom to top up her makeup before tiptoeing back into bed. Maybe that joke is in Karyn Bosnak's 2006 novel, from which What's Your Number? Is adapted, and it was Kristen Wiig who yoinked the joke, so we're giving this one the benefit of the doubt. However, as the comedy progresses it becomes obvious that What's Your Number is reminiscent of so many other rom-coms and its plot sounds a lot like a Sex and the City episode.

Faris' Ally Darling is the type who allows glossy magazines dictate her life so when she reads an article that states the average number of partners a woman has in her life is 10.5, she, because she has just slept with her twentieth lover, panics. Ally decides to trawl through her previous boyfriends in the hope one of them is 'the one' so she won't hit that nightmare number of twenty-one. But tracking them down isn't easy and she asks love-rat neighbour Chris Evans, in full-on smug mode, to help out (he's from a family of cops and knows how to find those who don't want to be found, apparently).

You certainly can't blame Faris for trying something different and she deserves a shot at a leading lady status but maybe it's that she has done the wacky roles so well, it's hard to buy Faris as the everywoman here. Maybe it's the jokes aren't strong enough, which might explain why cameos from Andy Samberg, Martin Freeman and Thomas Lennon, who play three of Faris' exes, fail to raise the necessary giggles. Try as they might Evans and Faris don't buzz off each other as two leads in a rom-com should. They have the required lines and a buff Evans has a penchant to be half-naked for half the running time but the comic moments here are rather stiff.

It doesn't have an imagination either. It's content to stay well within the confines of the romantic comedy: girl needs guy but doesn't realise that the guy who is always around is right for her; when girl realises guy is right for, there is a wedge driven between them to allow for a last minute dash at the climax. It's all so predictable.

It could be fun if you've never seen a romantic comedy before but chances are you have.