Product: What Women Want [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 2.0
Nike 3 Freud 1
Freud, famously, despaired of discovering what women wanted (perhaps he might have done better to ask women, but that thought was a little too left-field for him). What a shame he flourished in the wrong century, for otherwise he would have discovered courtesy of this finely untuned film. The answer to what women what is: well, actually the question is phrased wrongly. The question we should be asking is: what do Nike want women to want? And the answer, of course, is: Nike sportswear. Easy!Never has product placement been more shameless. And never has Helen Hunt seemed more at sea, which isn't her fault as she has an impossible role: the women who outsmarts the man with every single possible advantageous loading the film can get him. Even his flaws work in his favour: thus he's the ultimate womaniser yet - and this is a tad strange, you might think - has a sexual technique that would make a rhino look leisurely. This is the big brother of the 'ha, you may have ruined our lives but you have small genitals' school of writing, in which all patriarchal power is pretty much left in place, apart from a small genital gag which somehow makes everything all right. Anyway, Marisa Tomei cures Mel of his rhinoceros loving, and after that... Well, nothing much really. He pays attention to his daughter, he falls in the least convincing love to hit our screens for a few weeks, and he stops a geek-slash-wallflower from killing herself. Our hero!But the main point of the film: he gives a really cool presentation to the Nike team, about the forthcoming campaign which is shown in all its virtuosity. You know, it used to be that if you timed it right you could reach your cinema seat just as the adverts ended and the trailers began. But no more. Oh what a brave new century we live in.