Entertainment

It’s a less than magic ‘Number’

“You seem like the type of girl who tries to make a bad thing work,” Chris Evans says to Anna Faris in “What’s Your Number?”

This is certainly true of Faris’ character, who’s looking for love within a pool of ex-boyfriends. But it also applies to the actress herself.

No matter how charmingly loopy she is, Faris can’t transcend the stale gender clichés and rehashed rom-com set pieces that keep this movie from being what director Mark Mylod apparently wants it to be — the new “Bridesmaids’’ — right down to the identical opening gag.

“What’s Your Number?” breaks no new ground as Ally Darling (Faris), a 20-something Bostonian, frets about not yet having found “the one,” while helping her sister (Ari Graynor) plan a lavish wedding.

When Ally reads a Marie Claire article about the significance of the number of a woman’s sexual partners — more than 20 dooms you to certain spinsterhood — she asks around and discovers her number (19) is higher than most of her friends’. Chastened, she vows to make it work with one of the men she’s already bedded.

She enlists the aid of her neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans), who keeps sneaking into Ally’s apartment in various states of undress to escape morning-after chitchat with his own conquests. She makes a deal: She’ll let him hide out if he’ll help track down all her exes.

This sets up a series of interludes with some very likable actors. Chris Pratt, Faris’ real-life husband, plays a newly svelte ex-boyfriend. British actor Martin Freeman (“Sherlock”) witnesses the slow, drunken deterioration of Ally’s fake accent. Andy Samberg of “SNL,” in flashback, is the geeky puppeteer who deflowered her.

Tom Lennon is a gynecologist who remembers her only when she scootches down to the end of the examining table. Anthony Mackie’s aspiring politician thanks Ally for helping him realize he’s gay. Each seems to have the same reaction I did: What’s the point of all this?

Meanwhile, Colin — adorable enough to make it glaringly obvious he’s Mr. Right — is the voice of reason. “What kind of guy cares about how many people you slept with, anyway?” he says. It’s a fair point, especially coming from someone whose number looks to be in the triple digits, but the double standard never merits any serious consideration.

When not teaching facile lessons about being true to yourself, “What’s Your Number?” does offer a handful of genuinely funny one-liners about sex. Unfortunately, it undermines them by dropping the word “vagina” enough times to make Sarah Silverman blush.

But then, as Evans’ sage horndog might point out, it’s not the number of vaginas that matters. It’s what you do with them that counts.