What Women Want, one thing anyway, is to get their value when they pay to see a movie. It’s also one of the things men want as well. So, in this case anyway, What Women Want is what everyone wants. Advertising executive Nick Marshall, played by Mel Gibson, was already the ultimate male chauvinist even before he was passed up for a promotion that went to a woman. Now, just when his disdain for women couldn't be higher, a freak accident gives him the power to read women’s minds turning his world, and the world of the women around him, completely upside down.

What Women Want is one of those films that’s so much fun you don’t notice how many holes the plot contains until well after the film is over. No explanation is ever given as to why the electrical accident Gibson is involved in gives him the power to read the minds of females, including female animals such as dogs or cats, but not males. Nor is the fact that the power is inconsistent, allowing him to hear the thoughts of women sometimes, but not others, ever explained. But these, along with several other similar questions ignored during What Women Want, are not important enough to interfere with the laughs in this film. Whether he is, in blissful ignorance, steamrolling over his female co-workers and employees or prancing around in panty hose and fingernail polish in a drunken attempt to get in touch with his feminine side Gibson is absolutely terrific as the alpha of all male pigs. Helen Hunt does a good job as well, along with the rest of the supporting cast, but this is Gibson’s film and he runs with it as he uses his new found power of telepathy to even further exploit the women around him. Only the more he looks into the hearts of the women around him the more he becomes aware of their humanity and, as a result, his own as well.

In one spot the ending of What Women Want is awkward and uncomfortable and, as the film’s weakest part, should have been rewritten to eliminate a certain harshness near the end between Gibson and Hunt. Otherwise What Women Want is as good a romantic comedy as any that has come around for quite awhile. So don’t be surprised if seeing What Women Want is what the women, or men, in your life want to do.

Grade: A

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