Day 136: What's Your Number?

Ally (Anna Faris) reads in a magazine that the average number of sexual partners women have  in their lifetime is 10.5 and that if your number is more than 20 then you’re less likely to get married. She is currently at number 19 and that same night she hits the 20 mark. Not wanting to go any higher, she decides to go back through her exes and see if she’ll end up with one of them. In order to track them down she enlists the help of her neighbour Colin (Chris Evans).

The synopsis on IMDb says, “A woman looks back at the past twenty men she's had relationships with in her life and wonders if one of them might be her one true love.” That would make you think that perhaps Ally had decided what was best for her and thought she’d find what she was looking for in a past relationship. But you would be wrong in thinking that. In the film she is essentially slut-shamed into not going any higher than 20 and she only decides to trawl through her exes because she doesn’t want to be a woman with a higher number than 20 because guys don’t like it. Which makes me want to explode. At one point she tells a guy that she’s had 20 partners and he actually says “yuck.” Her friends try to make her feel bad about it and one of them says that women who have sex with lots of different guys have low self-esteem. I’m not saying that’s not maybe true of some women but that’s not just universally true. Some women just like sex and they enjoy it with more than one partner. And it’s not “gross” and it doesn’t say anything about who the woman is herself. So, enoooough.

Once you ignore the ridiculous plot of the film, it’s alright. There are some funny bits and Colin was sweet. But seriously, people of the planet. It doesn’t matter if you have sex with lots of different people or if you don’t have sex at all. All that matters is that it’s what you want.

5/10

Day 69: Half Nelson

Trying to balance being a teacher and being an addict is proving difficult for Dan (Ryan Gosling). One of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), discovers his habit and the two become friends.

Drey comes across as quite lonely. Her mother is a paramedic who is working all the shifts she can in order to have some money and her brother is in prison, so she’s left pretty much to herself. One night she catches Dan smoking crack in the locker room at school and she stays with him while he goes through the effects. They seem to bond in that moment and from then on the two care about each other. He tries to help her stay away from her drug dealer friend but it’s obviously difficult for him to justify this since he can’t function on a day-to-day basis without drugs in his system. He tries to push her away but when he’s close to hitting bottom, she is there for him. It looks like he’s going to clean up and it seems to be because he has her looking out for him. It just takes one person.

“Change moves in spirals, not circles. For example, the sun goes up and then it comes down but every time that happens, what do you get? You get a new day. You get a new one. When you breathe, you inhale and then you exhale but every single time that you do that, you’re a little bit different than the one before. We’re always changing. And it’s important to know that there are some changes you can’t control but that there are others you can.”

8/10