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What Women Want Customer Reviews (40 - 42 of 55 Reviews)

See it with your girlfriends, but spare your boyfriend
What can I say? Ladies will most likely love this movie, and men will most likely not. Funny, romantic, but ultimately sexist and insulting, "What Women Want" is not the movie you should suggest on your first date. Cheer it on with your girlfriends, but spare your boyfriend or husband this "relationship test" and watch "When Harry Met Sally" instead.

Mel Gibson plays a charming yet chauvanistic man who suddenly finds he has the ability to read women's minds. At first overwhelmed, Mel uses his gift for his own personal gain, yet gradually he learns to understand and love women, and in the end he is stripped of his undesirable male qualities and falls for the film's "every-woman", Helen Hunt. Gibson's subtle performance provides the only personality in this entire film, keeping it from becoming a dry, sexist political statement. This includes a beautiful dance number to Sinatra which recalls Estare and Crosby (this scene was entirely Gibson's idea). The other performances, including Helen Hunt's, all fall along the lines of "the universal woman" vs. "the universal man." Basically, all the women Gibson interacts with are the same woman, just at different stages in her life. All the men are deceitful, uncaring, or clueless, save for gorgious hunk Gibson who "changes".

Fans of this movie might claim that Gibson's highly chauvanistic character lends some balance to the male-bashing, but they fail to realize that healthy men and women are offended by both. Consider: not only does this film's "perfect man" look like Mel Gibson, but he can read minds as well. Not even the real Mel Gibson can meet those standards. The "romantic" ending of this film has Gibson kissing the heroine right after she fires him. Our hero. I find it funny that the trailers for this movie showed some derrogatory scenes against Arab women which were cut from the film (pre-Sep 11) for obvious reasons. It highlights the basic nature of this film.

This Woman Wants Her Money Back
I adore romantic comedies and am capable of suspending disbelief with the best of them, but this movie inspired neither chuckle or teardrop, just the overwhelming desire to kick myself for renting it.

Mel Gibson is his usual "I'm too cute for my own good" self as he half-hamedly works his way through this inane story about an ad man (one of the usual careers for movie characters) who finds himself far more devilishly charming than others do. After a jolt to his under used brain he obtains the ability to read minds - but, for some mysterious yet convenient reason, only those of women. Instead of rubbing his hands together, laughing fiendishly, and start plotting to take over the world, he uses this new super human power to seduce the ladies, connive his way into a promotion, and manipulate his daughter. Of course, he learns some mighty important lessons in the process and changes into a better dad and a nice guy.

Helen Hunt is given nothing new to work with and might as well be doing an episode of her old sitcom without the laughs.

A perplexing amount of people seem to love this movie which must mean I have far superior taste <sticks nose in air> or else I'm just some twisted old hag who'd rather knit sweaters from my dog's hair then embrace this gift that Hollywood has so generously bestowed upon us. Either way, I still consider this a lame excuse for a romantic romp.

Hopefully We All Want More Than This
Mel Gibson is charming, and funny, but the film turns away from it's clever premise too early and opts for being a corny predictable mediocre romantic drama rather than an edgy comedy.

The good news is, Mel Gibson is one heck of a likeable charismatic charming guy. He does a nice little throw-away dance number as sort of an homage to Fred Astaire (to Sinatra's Don't Dance). He also does a funny impression of Sean Connery.

The funniest moments are mostly the one's you've seen in the commercials (they're a bit less polite in the film then they were in the commercial). There's a few other amusing ones and plenty of charm and likeable performances from Gibson, Helen Hunt, Alan Alda and Marisa (remember her?) Tomei. Delta Burke, Valerie Perrine and other actors you might recognize show up but are given very little to do.

After setting up the characters like a high class sit-com with bigger stars, the best the writers can come up with is to have Mel Gibson's character nearly electrocute himself in the bathtub with a hair dryer and wake up several hours later with uncanny ability to hear what women are secretly thinking. The writers (Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa and Diane Drake get the credit) at first manage to keep the premise from being a bad 70's Disney Comedy in new clothing. They manage with Nancy Meyer's direction to construct some not quite predictable and amusing scenes which allow Mel Gibson to show off his comic timing. Helen Hunt has had a lot of practice reacting to goofy male hijinks in her t.v. series Mad About You and does a good job here reacting and playing off Mel Gibson. She shines in a few moments where she's got the laugh lines.

The film drops most of its comedy at about the half-way point and becomes a straight romantic film. A predictable, corny, tired romantic film which offers no surprises, interesting twists or anything funny during it's last half hour. The only reason it stays afloat is because of the charm and charisma or the lead actors.

But what do I know? It's doing well at the box-office, a lot of people will tell their friends it's a pretty good film with some very funny scenes in the beginning before it turns into a mushy corny film at the end.

Awwwww mushy and corny ain't so bad is it?

Well, no... there's nothing with some romance and even corniness in a film, but not one that starts out in a different direction and then decides that audiences really want a nice romantic film to go to over the holiday season so we'll play everything as safe and predictable as a t.v. sit-com that suddenly gets serious to deliver a message about doing the right thing and telling the truth.

I hope women (and men too) want more from their movies than this one delivers. I sure do.

Let me suggest a far better romantic comedy which is not as boring and predictable as this high concept comedy is. It's still in theaters and its called Chocolat. (Check out my review of it if you want).

Oh and another thing Women May Want and aren't going to get in this film is another shot of Mel Gibson's buns.

Chris Jarmick, Author (The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder-a steamy cyber- thriller Available February 2001)

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