Mandaris🍿 What’s Your Number? (2011) - ★☆☆☆☆
This movie left an aftertaste. A taste that grows worse and worse every time I think about it on the whole.
I recall the line from Ted Lasso where the bartender, Mae Green, was telling him that it’s the hope that kills you.
In this movie, it’s the hope that it will be good that kills me.
The movie has a lot going for it:
- Notable, good actors that go on to other better projects
- Chemistry between the leads
- A chance to do the something with a premise that has been done with men. I thought it was nice to see them change it up where it’s not the charming young Batchelor who decides that he wants to see where he went wrong with his philandering life style.
I looked it up and saw that the primary writers were women. I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be a bunch of guys thinking they could write from a different perspective. “Just write what a man would do and change the roles.” I hoped that it wouldn’t just be a bunch of things that women were “supposed” to do or behave.
Well, the movie does one great thing. And that is demonstrate that everything comes down to execution. And the first thing that gets executed is the character of our female protagonist. Instead of the suave, successful Batchelor, we get an unambitious, newly unemployed woman who has a thing for what the movie would define as losers.
The most egregious issue is the motivation of our protagonist is that she’s had a lot of sexual partners and doesn’t want the number to go up any more.
Big Whoop.
The movie posits that if she has too many partners, she’ll never get married and her life will be incomplete. She just needs to find the “right one” and everything else will work out.
If you feel that being single means being lonely, I hope you get a chance to rethink that. Relationships are great and it’s amazing to share that with someone, but you can get more out of it you are comfortable being and knowing who you are. If you look for that missing piece in someone else, you might never find peace within yourself.
Enough ranting from me.
Here’s the link to the official trailer on YouTube. Watch it and imagine a better movie.
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