| WHAT WOMEN WANT Release Date: 02/02/01 Certificate: 12 Official Website Director: Nancy Meyers Producers: Nancy Meyers, Susan Cartsonis, Bruce Davey, Gina Matthews & Matt Williams Screenplay: Josh Goldsmith & Cathy Yuspa |
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| A clever title: What Women Want refers to both the movie's subject matter, and the movie itself. Don't be fooled by Mel Gibson's presence, this is nothing more than your standard chick-flick, exactly what women want. Gibson plays Nick Marshall, an advertising executive. Like all men, as this film would have it, Nick is only interested in using attractive women for sex, and doesn't care about them at all. When Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt) gets the Creative Director job that Marshall thought was his, he is determined to win it back. I'm sure it's already apparent that they fall in love and live happily ever after. But How ?! I hear you ask. |
| In a freak and unfunny accident, Marshall manages to elecrocute himself in the bath, after some cringeworthy scenes of him talking to himself. Unfortunately, rather than leaving him a smoking corpse, Nick gains the ability to hear what women are thinking. Fortunately women think in occasional coherent sentences, so it's pretty easy for him to run rings round them with this new ability. Strangely, he finds that women don't particularly like him, because he's a smutty pig who wears too much aftershave; which does begs the question of why he has so much luck with them. |
| He uses his telepathic powers to find out how to make women like him, and to steal ideas from Darcy. As the movie meanders to a close he clearly has to come clean, but will she still love him? What do you think? Does anyone care? Haggard old Mel Gibson puts in his usual charismatic performance, despite having to slog his way through all the chick-flickery and painfully banal comedy. After the turgid yawn-fest The Patriot, and now this, Gibson should really make a decent movie soon. 3/10 |
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