Reviewer's Rating 3 out of 5
What Women Want (2001)
12

You would never believe it until you saw it. Mel Gibson applies eye shadow and crimson nail varnish, waxes his legs, squeezes himself into tights, and prances around his luxurious Chicago apartment. This isn't because he's turned transvestite, but because he's a high-powered adman obliged to get to grips with the psychology of women. His agency boss (Alan Alda) has head-hunted a new creative director (Helen Hunt), thwarting Gibson's designs on the job, and she is setting him a tough agenda.

Forgetting a basic rule - never use a hair dryer in the bath - he nearly electrocutes himself. Instead, a miracle. The accident enables him to hear what women are thinking. What power. He soon empathizes with Helen Hunt to such a degree that she thinks she has found a soul mate. Sadly, he simply steals her ideas. He also exploits an aspiring actress (Marisa Tomei) on the coffee counter by accurately fulfilling her sexual needs in a one-night stand, then dumping her.

Nancy Meyer's comedy has plenty of pithy things to say on the eternal sex war. Gibson soon learns that his flirtatious cuteness towards women in the office is actually resented. He also discovers that a girl who carts files around is suicidal because he passed her over for a copywriting job months earlier.

Both Gibson and Hunt (who seems to be in everything these days) are in a way too good for such a ludicrous comedy, but they give it a classiness that lifts it from mere farce.

Has this film been made before?

Read a review of the "What Women Want" DVD.

End Credits

Director: Nancy Meyers

Writer: Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa

Stars: Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei, Alan Alda, Ashley Johnson, Mark Feuerstein

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Length: 126 minutes

Cinema: 2 February 2001

DVD: 6 August 2001

Country: USA

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