You have to worry about poor Chris Evans when he's around
the ladies. The man can't help himself. He has an effect on them. And if Chris
has his shirt off (and I can assure the makers of “The Devil Wears Prada” and
“27 Dresses” make him expose his ripped torso as much as is indecently
possible) – Chris is frankly irresistible to the opposite sex. A little like me
on a Monday morning in a Walthamstow urinal…
Like most - I hadn’t expected much from "What's Your
Number?" – yet it actually sparkles when so many other rom-coms don’t.
It’s a genuinely funny and entertaining ride.
A huge part of its success has to go to ANNA FARIS who goes
after this rom-com role like Katherine Heigl on speed. Her character Ally is
all mouth and attitude, juggling a manic work life and occasionally stopping to
have sex when the mood takes and the menu looks right. But in a kiss-and-tell
cocktail chat with some bitchy friends – she realizes that her
previous-partner-count has in fact topped 19 - and the next guy has to be the
magic 20. Cue cameos of former lovers (Sherlock’s Martin Freeman is excellent)
and awkward situations involving varying amounts of revolving underwear.
Meanwhile in the apartment across the hall her admittedly
handsome neighbour Colin keeps dodging a constant procession of one-night
stands with lady lovelies. Whether these poor women adore him or not - Colin seems
obnoxious to them and even uses Ally’s apartment on occasion to hide from his
conquests. So it isn’t long before the feckless two strike up an unholy bargain – Colin
can hold up in her place when he needs to avoid reasonability – in return he’ll
help Ally track down those past boyfriends to see if they might now represent
potential husband material. Will love triumph over crabs, checklists and
cockroaches? Will Ally find the man of her dreams? Is Number 20/Mister Right in
fact right under her nose? Let me hazard a guess…
The picture quality on the BLU RAY is gorgeous throughout –
defaulted to 1.85:1 so it fills out the full screen naturally. There are 8
Deleted Scenes as extras and a very funny ‘Gag Reel’. Subtitle supplied are:
Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese,
Latin Spanish, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and English For The Hard Of Hearing.
Also note that the American 20th Century Fox issue is REGION A LOCKED so it
won’t play on our machines unless they’re chipped to be ‘all regions’ (which
few are). Stick with the UK variant – as you can see it’s available for under a
fiver in most places.
“What’s Your Number?” is far better than it had any divine
right to be (my 20 year old daughter laughed a lot).
A bit of a hoot frankly and thoroughly recommended.
Now all I need to do is count backwards myself. Now let me
see was it 250 or was it 275?
