Product: What Women Want [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 4.0
What Men Get
I have a confession to make. I am a dyed in the wool Mel Gibson fan, and I have been since Mad Max. Okay, despite hating most mainstream movies with everything from Adam Sandler to Joel Schumacher making me nauseous beyond compare, I like movies like this. However, I usually make an effort to see most Gibson movies, with the Lethal Weapon series being at the top of the heap. So my natural aversion to the so-called `chick flick' kicked it when my wife suggested we watch `What Women Want' on pay per view. This is a good movie.Nick Marshall (Gibson) is an misogynist advertising executive at Sloan-Curtis, the women he works with despise him for it, and who finds himself turned down for the top marketing job at his firm when it's given to Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt...okay, okay, I like her, too!), who is everything to advertising that Nick isn't. And now she has the job that he feels he should have had. And when she announces that the company is missing out on billions of dollars of advertising revenue from women, Nick decides to prove to her that he knows what women want. He does this by waxing his legs, wearing nylons, wearing nail polish in one of the funniest scenes as he all but kills himself in the process. The waxing agony leads to accident that causes him to fall into the bathtub and electrocutes himself with a hair dryer. Being electrocuted in Chicago gives misogynist advertising executives receptive telepathy.He can hear what women are thinking and this unnerves him. In fact it scares the hell out of him. If the strangers on the way to work was bad, he just isn't prepared for the barrage of hatred from his female coworkers. He goes to see Bette Midler who plays a marriage councillor, who also hates him. He lays it out for her, he knows what women are thinking, then proves it. She explains that he has a gift, and if he knows what women want, he can rule. He begins to play a game- learning how and what women think and using it to get the better of them. All of them, including his estranged daughter. Effortlessly, by listening to their thoughts then formulating his responses based on that, he quickly becomes their best friend, confident and go-to man for advice. He also begins undercutting Darcy's position with their boss. He also notices Erin, an intern who feels that no one notices her and wonders if anyone would notice if she just killed herself.Things start to fall apart for Nick when he realizes that he cares for Darcy, becomes closer with his daughter and even ingratiates himself to most of the female staff at Sloan-Curtis, even Erin. Nick wants to succeed and get the job that Darcy has, but can't change the fact that he's falling for her big time. She's sweet, honest, down to earth- all the things he hates in women, and she's hooked him. Despite being selfishly motivated, Marshall gets more than he bargained for. `What Women Want' is hilarious, but it's also got some messages that it subtly gets across. Maybe if we said good-bye collectively to the games and [stuff] we play between each other, then perhaps we could get down to what's really important.