What Women Want
Little Voices
I heard the women’s voices even before Mel Gibson did. It was the scene where Mel is standing before the mirror, wearing only a towel, and drunkenly trying out different products which his ad agency is considering marketing to women. And as Mel started applying the mascara, I heard a voice.
“He looks old.”
And it would happen again. It was the scene where Mel is taking his daughter to a ritzy shop on the Magnificent Mile so that she can buy her prom dress, and she tries on all sorts of different outfits. And the third or fourth time that she came out of the dressing room, I heard another voice.
“That is one ugly dress.”
As it turns out, I hadn’t developed any special mystical mind-reading power; it was just that there was a gaggle of teenage girls sitting behind me, adding in a running commentary of the movie. (And if you find a DVD with that feature, buy something else, like Apollo 13.) I did try to turn around in my seat and glare at them, but this particular theater had high-backed seats; I couldn’t even see them clearly.
I hate it when people talk in movie theaters; but these girls didn’t ruin What Women Want for me. They couldn’t have; What Women Want came pre-wrecked, already mangled by a wretched script, monumentally poor casting, and a cheesy, superficial attitude towards women. What Women Want would like to be a smart comedy of errors, would like to be a poignant family drama, would like to be a slick and urbane romance. It ends up being nothing more than a confused, muddled mess, with storylines and ideas going every which way, blowing around like litter caught in a fierce Chicago wind.
We start with the premise, which is that Mel Gibson somehow acquires the ability to hear the secret thoughts of women. It’s one of those ideas that sounds good on the drawing board, but doesn’t work that well when translated to the big screen. Also, not everyone’s going to buy it. I was trying to explain the movie to a female friend with a high-powered logical mind, who asked, “Why does he just hear the thoughts of women?”
“Oh, come now,” says I. “You were expecting logic and reason from Hollywood?”
“Well, no, but still…”
“It supposedly had to do with the fact that he was wearing pantyhose when he got an electrical shock.”
“Well, then, could he hear the thoughts of gay men?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that.
What Women Want might have worked, actually, if it had been a smaller, independent movie, with lower expectations and less lofty goals. Its failure is not totally due to the presence of Mel Gibson, but he is principally responsible. The movie might have worked better with an unknown actor at the helm, with someone who might not radiate the sex appeal that Mel does. What Women Want presents Mel as someone who already knows What Women Want, or at least has a pretty good idea. Even before he gets that electric shock, he’s already established an enviable track record of getting women to do what he wants them to do. It would seem — to me, anyway — that it would be a little more fun to give the power to read women’s thoughts to someone who is a little more confused and bewildered by women than Mel seems to be.
That casting error is compounded by another one. The two women in Mel’s life are played by Helen Hunt and Marisa Tomei, both of whom have made their careers by playing smart, forthright women. Think, for example, of the direct way that Hunt seduces Richard Gere in Dr. T and the Women, or the way that she speaks her mind to Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. Most notably, think of Tomei’s Oscar-winning turn in My Cousin Vinny, where she defined forthright and direct. It’s never too terribly hard to tell what’s on either of their minds. What Mel is hearing isn’t so far removed from what they’re saying that it makes a difference. Half the time, the secret thoughts of the women characters aren’t really that much of a secret. Casting an actress with a little more of an air of mystery about her — Claire Forlani comes to mind, as she so often does — would have made What Women Want a subtler, better movie.
Worse, What Women Want cheats, shamefully, in three specific ways. First, the movie goes to the trouble of getting Lauren Holly to play Mel’s ex-wife, and then completely ignores her, to the point that we never hear what she really thinks about Mel. Second, the movie does a similar disservice to Mel’s secretaries, Delta Burke and Valerie Perrine; it either assumes that they don’t have any thoughts or that Mel can’t hear them. (And, for some reason, the movie gives Delta Burke a horrendous New York accent; why not hire Fran Drescher and have done with it? It couldn’t have made things any worse.)
Thirdly, the movie cheats by throwing in a character who works as a messenger at Mel’s ad agency who is experiencing depression and having suicidal thoughts; this is done primarily to give Mel the opportunity to rescue her, just as though she was a toddler who had fallen down a well or something. It’s a graceless note in a graceless movie; memorable only because the messenger’s apartment is decorated with some large, wooden dominoes, and I want some.
It was right after this scene that I heard the teenagers start talking again behind me. “This movie is dragging”, they said, and I couldn’t help but agree with them. What Women Want is a miserable, unfunny movie with a long, drawn-out ending that ends up betraying a premise with a lot of potential and a fair performance from Mel Gibson. If you hear little voices from behind you telling you not to bother with this one; make sure you listen to them.