Product: What Women Want [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 3.0
Not a bad idea, but...
What Women Want (2000) dir. Nancy MeyersI'm glad to discover a woman directed it, for she ought to know what women want.A Mel Gibson vehicle. Also a Helen Hunt vehicle. Also a vehicle for the numerous women in the film. Also a vehicle for men whose obscure mental processes don't know what women want.An interesting premise: through an accident (a near electrocution), Gibson's mind acquires the ability to hear women's thoughts. At first this puzzles him, enervates him, and he is left clueless as to what to do. He is insulted to hear the vile things women think about him. He thinks this is a curse, not a gift. Soon, however, a therapist (Bette Middler) suggests that he take advantage of this unexpected talent--and become a mind reader. He steals an idea from his boss (Helen Hunt) about an advertising campaign--and he gets a big job while she is fired.They begin a romance, of course. Gibson also has trouble with his teenage daughter (Ashley Johnson), but through mind reading their relations smooth. He also has a girl friend, Lola (Marisa Tomei), reads her mind, knows she wants sex with him; he has sex with her, and of course also with Hunt (whose first name is Darcy), for she too desires him. Eventually, through another near electrocution, he becomes cured of this aberration--and normal again. Now he is happy, having secured Hunt's job again, having gotten rid of Lola, and reconciled himself with his daughter--who thinks him a caring parent now.No a bad premise, but a pretty ordinary story comes out of it. It would have been more interesting if Gibson and Hunt engaged in a battle of wits (or battles of the sexes) as Beatrice and Benedict do in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. This actually starts when Marshall steals an idea from McGuire's head; it would have been interesting if she had understood his game and exposed him. By remaining ignorant, she plays the game at a disadvantage, and her status in the story is reduced. In other words, both Hunt and Gibson play a more or less dumb plot--and roles. The script, clever up to a point, falls back into the trodden paths--romantic plots--and loses whatever punch it had. It reduces two competent actors (not to mention some of the others in the ensemble cast) to repeating worn out trivialities instead of engaging them in a truly ingenious contest of mind and feeling.This role is especially painful for Gibson, who looks older (he is) and capable of going beyond the trivial roles that his profession imposes upon him. After Braveheart (so-so to me), the masculine monster of the Lethal Weapon series, and, above, all the two movies he made with Australian auteur Peter Weir--Galipolli and The Year of Living Dangerously--this movie is a fall-off in status. Helen Hunt, too, is reduced to unintelligence, though she manages a slithering sexiness and a presence that only a mature actress can project. Overall, though, this is not as much a bad movie as a lost opportunity. Actors, like everyone else, age, and their glory passes.