What's Your Number? – review

It's very silly and cheesy, and the opening gag is unfortunately the same as the one that starts Bridesmaids, but there is something puppyishly likable in this romantic comedy starring Anna Faris desperate to snag a marriageable man, from the British director Mark Mylod. Faris is Ally, a young singleton who is fired from her job in marketing at the same time that she reads in Marie Claire that the number of men she has slept with – 20 – is about twice the national average, and that the higher a woman's number is, the less likely she is to get married. She wails: "I'm a jobless whore who's slept with 20 guys!" Keen not to increase that figure, and fascinated by the phenomenon whereby guys who were dorks in their teens blossom into presentable thirtysomethings, Ally sets out on the Hornbyesque mission of tracking down all her old boyfriends, to see if any one of them could be single, and husband material. But could she be secretly in love with the annoying-yet-sexy guy who lives next door, played by Chris Evans? Romcoms tend notoriously to be all rom and no com, but there is some fun here and some laughs in the standalone setpieces featuring Ally's appalling exes. A nice rental.