Product: What Women Want [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 5.0
Almost Didn't See This Film Because of Bad Reviews
I actually waited until I was able to pick this up in my public library to see it. The bad word on it was incredible so I'd been avoiding it. I figured hubby wouldn't last at all through it if even I was skeptical about it. I said my famous opening line to him to get him to watch it, "Let's just give it the 15 minute test. If it's not even good for that, we'll go onto something else." The opening was quite good about the male lead's childhood and I said, "Gee, usually films aren't real bad with that good an opening." (When they open with endless minutes of driving around with credits superimposed over the driving, I know that I'm usually in for a real bad time, by contrast.) Fifteen minutes into this film, we were both equally charmed by it and Mel Gibson, whose talent as a romantic lead is not dimmed by age. Every fifteen minutes one or the other of us muttered about how had this gotten such bad reviews. I had heard Gibson was too old for this role too. That is not true either and he is a lot younger than Cary Grant was when he bowled everyone over romantically in "North By Northwest." Both hubby and I were also thinking back to the romantic comedies of decades ago and were delighted to see its resurrection here. Need I say this had Doris Day and Rock Hudson type charm? I guess I better and remind viewers that "Pillow Talk" and "Lover Come Back" were huge, engaging hits with similar material. The gist of the story is that top ad man Gibson does not get the top job at his agency because it goes to Helen Hunt. He gets the ability to read women's minds by accident and schemes to get Hunt's job with this newest gift. He starts falling in love with Hunt though as he steals her ad ideas right out of her head. He has a brief patient-shrink visit with Bette Midler and one of his funniest bits is finding out that women really think he is an incredible jerk! He didn't have a clue, thinking that he was God's gift to women instead. Gibson has some solo moments in the movie which are just great. He tries on all of a woman's cosmetic products at home one night to learn how to sell them. This was hilarious, especially watching him wriggle into panty hose. He also dances with a hat rack a la Fred Astaire and is surprisingly good at it. This film was directed by a woman, Nancy Meyers, and we both thought that showed in the best sense possible as it was a pleasure to see Gibson not being beaten up or used as action-adventure fodder for a change. In fact, I haven't enjoyed seeing him in a movie this much in a long, long time and I can remember back to seeing him in his original "Mad Max" movie in the 1970s when it opened in the USA and loving it and seeing him in "Tim" shortly after that and loving that too. Helen Hunt does a very solid job here too as the female lead but it is obviously a lesser part to Gibson's starring role. They have very good chemistry together.