What's Your Number? is this week's most ridiculous trailer

Romantic comedies aren't known for their mind-bending plot twists, but even in the template-governed world of Hollywood, they tend to be especially formulaic. To wit, every romantic comedy must conclude with one of two possible outcomes: Either, a) The female lead will end up with the dude who initially repulses...

By Jef Otte

September 30, 2011

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Romantic comedies aren't known for their mind-bending plot twists, but even in the template-governed world of Hollywood, they tend to be especially formulaic. To wit, every romantic comedy must conclude with one of two possible outcomes: Either, a) The female lead will end up with the dude who initially repulses her, or b) The female lead will end up with the best-friend type who can't commit and could never be with her anyway because they're, like, such good friends. Perhaps the only remarkable thing about What's Your Number?, then, is that it offers up both those archetypes in its male lead -- first the one, then the other -- allowing us to ascertain every single plot point of the 90-minute movie within 45 seconds of watching its trailer. And it offers up few other surprises.

Far more interesting than watching this trailer, actually, is imagining the events that led to its creation. Like, deep in the belly of 20th Century Fox, some club-footed technician with a lazy eye plugs variables into the Romcom 5000: "quirky cast of tertiary characters," "slutty leads who just want to find love except the dude is afraid of commitment and doesn't know it yet," "high-jinks," "wacky misunderstandings," "jokes about bodily parts and functions," "climactic scene in airport" -- I'm actually just guessing on that last one, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Since we have the trailer right in front of us, though, let's take a look. First of all, this whole movie is premised on a random factoid drawn from a fictional version of Cosmo, a magazine that has ruined the life of many a woman with random, insinuating factoids of questionable veracity -- so let's not pretend that Cosmo has ever done anything for anybody. Fast forward about 59 seconds -- you won't be missing much -- to the end, which provides the icing on this turd: Guys, how could we make this trailer even more unbearably hackneyed? How about a joke about a gynecologist who only recognizes women's vaginas? You know, because he's way into vaginas? Hilarious!

But, hey, how about that voiceover narration, huh? At least this trailer is kind enough to explain what's going on.

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