Anna Faris’s “What’s Your Number” is Apparently Our Big Chance to Prove Women are Funny

by Irin Carmon

Recently, a friend confessed that she was terrified, after viewing the trailer, that Bridesmaids was going to be no good, and that said not-goodness would confirm existing prejudices against funny women. (I saw Bridesmaids. Lots of people at the screening, including dudes and including myself, laughed a lot, but who knows.) And now here’s the trailer for Anna Faris’s What’s Your Number?, subject to some, if not all, of the same burdens of expectation.

This is one of the things that suck about being few or first: You get heightened scrutiny both from the people rooting for you and the people whose inertia or outside motivations mean rooting for you to fail.

It’s not that anyone expects an Anna Faris movie to be any “good” in the traditional sense. But she was, after all, the subject of a very extensive and, as far as we can tell, widely read New Yorker piece in which her professional trials were a parable for what it’s like to be a funny, or would-be funny, or funnyish lady in Hollywood, and also be blonde and cute and somewhat conciliatory. From that piece we learned a few things about what generated the finished product teased in the trailer.

+ Odds were already stacked against it because “studio executives believe that male moviegoers would rather prep for a colonoscopy than experience a woman’s point of view, particularly if that woman drinks or swears or has a great job or an orgasm.”

+ Don’t worry, this character doesn’t have a “great job,” or any one at all apparently. There was some worry that the line “I’m a jobless whore who’s slept with twenty guys, and I want to be with somebody who appreciates that about me!” would alienate older women. There was also the fear that 20 guys would make her a slutty slut.

+ The director and Faris “saw Ally as a wayward bohemian who would have tousled hair, wear the kind of jeans and “Magnum P.I.” T-shirts that Faris wears, and be noticeably heavier than a fashion model. New Regency [the studio] wanted Ally to be blond and trim and teeter around in high heels, as Faris had in “The House Bunny”—to embody the look for which the company was paying her $1.75 million. (Parker [a studio executive] argues that the grungy-bohemian idea was a cliché, and that “it felt like it would be too easy to write Ally off as a screwup if everything about her is a mess—if she’s just the female equivalent of a man-child.”) A few questions about these assertions: What about a trim, teetering blonde is not a cliche? What “grungy bohemian” that is also female has been protagonist in a major movie? (I’m asking seriously. Does Juno count?) And does Parker care to elaborate on the difference between a lead man-child and an unrelatable female-child? (This is not a word, which is instructive.)

+ It bears noting that in Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig’s character is pretty much unrelentingly a total fuck-up. Woo girls!

+ That, by Faris’s own account, is fairly indicative of the overall control Faris had over the content, despite being an executive producer and helping pick the director.

+ Faris had to lose weight before the shoot, on the dime of the studio. Pretty standard.

So what’s the final result? It’s hard to detect, in my eyes at least, anything here that is terribly new or exciting about this movie, though not everyone agrees. “You know in the first ten seconds whom Faris’s unlucky-in-love character will end up with, and that person is a flawed-but-easily-redeemable really, really handsome guy with a big heart,” writes Amos Barshad. “But mostly everything else about this, admirably, feels new, most of all that Faris comes off as truly odd; not cutesy and appropriately eccentric, but fully weird in an occasionally unsettling way.”

I guess this is what pioneering looks like under very straightened circumstances and low expectations. And I feel kind of bad about both halves of that sentence.

+

This piece originally appeared on Jezebel. Republished with permission, motherfuckers!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Jezebel

Jezebel has written 38 articles for us.

12 Comments

  1. Umm.. So.. 20 guys is a lot, then?
    Because, back when I was still figuring shit out.. I think I hit 20 guys in like 2 years..
    Could this be why I admire Santana so much?
    hmm..

    • I’ve only been a non-virgin for a year and a half and I’m already at 15. I am such a slutty slut. Oh well.

    • that’s why I admire Santana so much

      i try to avoid counting, i usually just wave my hand in the air and say “oh a lot” and then they’re like “more than 10 guys” and i’m like “YES” with both my hands in the air making a lot of large gestures

  2. I don’t know how I feel about this. I maybe I’d watch this one random night once it hits Netflix streaming. Otherwise, I’m not all that interested, but then again, I’m pretty much unimpressed with anything that Hollywood puts out anymore and don’t like feeling as if I’ve spent half my life’s savings when I go to the movie theater.

  3. What world are we living in where Anna Faris’ brand of weird is more fear inducing than Zach Galifianakis’?

  4. I’m guessing this will be as mediocre as all of the other romantic comedies that Hollywood has created.

    At least Andy Samberg has a role in it, albeit a very minor one.

  5. This movie does not seem in the slightest bit original nor all that funny. I’ll give it a pass unless, like Dani, it shows up on my “Instantly Watch” portion of Netflix.

    It might just be me, but I’m so sick of unsurprising, uninteresting, unoriginal Hollywood romances! I mean really??? Come on – there has to be SOMEONE in Hollywood that could write something at least halfway original instead of the same ole’ “Girl meets boy, dates other boys, realizes first boy is the right one, and they live HAPPILY EVER AFTER”. I mean seriously? ****BORING****

    • Most directors and writers probably can do better. Movies just take way too much money to produce, so most directors can’t afford to be experimental.

      Same goes for the video-game and television industry.

      It’s also why most books and graphic novels have better stories.

  6. I’ve loved every Anna Faris movie I’ve seen, except Observe and Report… I also haven’t seen her latest w/Topher Grace…but this one looks good.

    And is 20 really a lot these days? I’m like Riese … I just say “enough to know what I’m doing”.

    Lastly, I can’t wait for Bridesmaids to come out. I love Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph sooooo much. They’re both too smart to be in a comedy that isn’t funny. And didn’t Kristen help write it?

Comments are closed.