This Slate's Spoiler Special is meant to be played after you see the movie being discussed.

The podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic here with a Slate Spoiler Special podcast on What's Your Number, the new Anaferris romantic comedy.

And here in the Slate Studios with me and at the movie with me last night was Jessica Gross, a Slate senior editor.

Hi, Dana. Thanks for letting me do this. Oh, yeah. I'm happy to be doing it with you. I'm just sorry

that we had to see such an abysmal movie. Okay, well, let's start off with our reactions and our hopes and how it measured up, and then we'll do a very quick plot summary, and then we'll get to spoiling. I had been highly anticipating this movie since Tad Friends profile on it Ferris came out.

I guess it was probably March of this year in the New Yorker.

I've always liked her performances.

I liked her in the House Bunny.

I find her very funny.

And so I was quite crestfallen to find that this movie was really not good.

Didn't you think the Ted Friend profile already kind of pointed at that?

I mean, essentially, his angle was sort of, you know, here is this funny, talented, pretty woman.

What is Hollywood going to do with her?

Does she have any hope?

And it seemed like there was a double-edged sword kind of feeling to the piece that, no, maybe she doesn't, you know, in spite of her gifts,

have any hope to escape the bad romantic comedy trap. So I actually had low

expectations for this, but boy, I mean, even those low expectations were not met. What an abysmal

movie. I thought that I find Anna Farras most successful when she is allowed to be fully raunchy

and or fully goofy. And this movie seemed to be trying tounchy and or fully goofy.

And this movie seemed to be trying to slot her into a stereotypical, boring, romantic comedy role with just flashes of that raunchiness and goofiness.

And those flashes were great and funny.

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