Adventures in the Talkies: What's Your Number?/Moneyball

Back when my friend Duse and I went to movies every single weekend of our late high school career, we resented the presence of non-serious moviegoers. Duse called the middle-aged to early senior, female-going matinee crowd "biddies."  They not only talked through Coming Attractions, they talked through the entire film, one party usually filling the air with inane questions like "Why did he/she do that?" After spending weeks, sometimes months planning to see a film, Duse and I were puzzled as we watched people walk up to the box office and ask what several of the titles were about! Or, worse yet, people clearly making arbitrary choices about what to see!

Now that I am much...much older, I'm beginning to see how that can come to pass. I was at work on Friday, with plans to see Moneyball at 7:15, and I thought to myself, "Why not see one of the matinees to kill some time?" (you know, rather than sit at work and goof off on a Friday Internet dead zone...)

My options, for films that would fit in that time slot and provide me with the opportunity to reasonably make it to the screen showing Moneyball early enough to not get stuck with crappy seats, were the excellent-looking 50/50...and the movie I selected, What's Your Number? I don't know that I selected it arbitrarily, but I have to admit I went into that film very much with a "Shrug! Need to waste some time!" attitude.

It did not disappoint. It indeed helped me waste my time.

Dave White gave the film a pounding for having gross semi-misogynistic overtones, and while that's valid, I suppose, I was much more disappointed in how lazy and sloppy it was in developing the characters ("Hey, guys, 30 minutes into the movie, we'll reveal she's an artist in such a casual and off-hand way, some viewers might not even realize that's going to play into her cobbled-together self-discovery!") and how the supposedly funny parts--the visits to all the exes, who were portrayed by very funny actors like Mr. Anna Faris and Thomas Lennon and Andy Samberg and Aziz Ansari's voice and Martin Freeman--barely elicted chuckles. I believe I laughed harder at Fozzie Bear's "What? I can't hear you! I have a banana in my ear!" in the AMC "Don't talk and text" ad than at any point in the movie.

It wasn't a bad concept--a girl who had lots of fun/couldn't find The One finds The One in a fellow fun-haver/slut--but ugh, it sucked. I don't know. It actually did the whole "I can sneak us into a major sporting venue" thing. I couldn't believe it. I sort of assumed, based on the premise, that the film was more self-aware than that. But there they were, playing strip HORSE where the Boston Celtics shoot hoops.

I thought Anna Faris was pretty funny in Just Friends, but...she didn't bowl me over in this. She's not terrible or anything, but I think she was part of the reason those ex visits fell so flat. She seemed torn between approaching the film as a gross-out, screwball I-slipped-and-fell-into-some-butterscotch-pudding event and in being Kate Hudson Katherine Heigl Anne Hathaway and being a rom com girl. And yay for women's empowerment, but limiting the aforementioned funny guys to 45 seconds really weakened the film's ability to generate belly laughs.

I guess the upside is that I think I can finally tell Chris Evans and Chris Pine apart. Chris Evans is much handsomer. Or at least taller.

Then I saw Moneyball. Moneyball was very, very, very good. Arftul and thoughtful and well-acted and engaging and interesting and layered and great.