"What Women Want"

Mel Gibson in pantyhose for starters -- but some would just rather have fewer insulting movies like this one.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Dec 15, 2000 | Sometimes the most fascinating thing about being a spectator at the parade of movies that passes by from year to year is trying to figure out why certain movies are made when they are. Sometimes, as in the case of the aggressively offensive Nancy Meyers comedy "What Women Want," it's the only fascinating thing. For anyone who's forced to endure it -- and I pity any human creature, male or female, who's dragged to it by his or her date -- my words of advice are this: Treat it as a sociological experiment. Why is a movie like "What Women Want" slipping into the stream right now, whether or not it really is what women, or anyone else for that matter, want?

The answer is simple, and it's explained in the movie's first half-hour: Women have more buying power and more disposable income than ever before. They're a juggernaut, and somebody's test-marketing somewhere has determined that they want to see Mel Gibson dancing about like a frustrated elf as he tries to tug a pair of pantyhose over his adorable little keister. ("See how he likes it!") They want to see a willfully clueless-about-women man taken down a peg or two. They want to see him admit, "Women are smarter than men." Because maybe if he says it, then it must be true. Right?

And does my butt look big in these pants?

There's no way around the fact that although "What Women Want" is being marketed toward women, it does nothing but condescend to them. For that reason alone, it's an intriguing if ugly little nugget of social history. Gibson is Nick Marshall, a superhandsome, womanizing, divorced advertising guy who swings into his Chicago office every day with a mix of charismatic sexual savoir-faire and an inflated sense of entitlement. The women who work with (and mostly under) him both tolerate him and swoon over him, confused creatures that they are; they grumble over having to do his filing, but they fairly crumple with delight when he pays them a compliment or bumps into them accidentally.

Nick's nose is put out of joint when hotshot go-getter gal Darcy Maguire (Helen Hunt) is hired away from a rival company and moves into his firm as creative director. Gibson's boss, Dan (Alan Alda, in the kind of razor-toothed nice-guy role he does better than anyone), has made it clear that, seeing as women are holding the purse strings in today's economy, his firm needs a woman's touch. (He doesn't use those exact words, but he might as well have.)

That makes Nick resent Darcy even more; when she distributes pink boxes filled with girly products (home leg-waxing kits, moisturizing lipstick, padded bras) and asks the creative team to think of new ways to sell them to women, he begins to despise her. He likes naked girls in his ads, goddamn it. Does this mean he'll actually have to change his modus operandi?

Suddenly, an accident knocks Nick unconscious. When he awakes, he realizes he can hear the thoughts of the women around him. It's mostly an unbearable cacophony of prattle about calorie counting and makeup colors, but he quickly realizes that he can use his newfound power for evil. So he sets out to sabotage his new colleague by stealing her ideas and presenting them as his own.

Predictably, he falls in love with her in the process. During this time, he also connects with his teenage daughter (Ashley Johnson), who is virtually a stranger to him, and becomes distressed and moved by hearing the thoughts of a suicidal young woman. Before long he is that most docile and desirable species of wildlife: a changed man.

Next Page: The infinitely sexy comic grace of Mel Gibson

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