"What Women Want"

That's giving away the ending of "What Women Want," but only in the barest sense, because anyone who has ever seen an ad knows how "What Women Want" will end. It's a movie draped like a pampered courtesan around that most basic of women's fantasies: the idea that a man will change for her, as the direct result of nothing more than coming into contact with her very essence.

Of course, men learn from women all the time (and vice versa), and sometimes they do change. But Meyers, aided and abetted by screenwriters Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, isn't deft or smart enough to just give us a fanciful joy ride. Her story has to be soaked in the same woozy psychology that Oprah Winfrey indulges in. As an explanation for why Nick thinks he's the center of the universe, we're told that his mother was a Vegas showgirl and that he was raised by a gaggle of cooing, fussing, adoring, half-naked women who catered to his every whim. Of course it should follow that Nick grows up to be a guy who never listens to women and thinks of them as his servants.

Yet that's not so much useful background information as some screenwriter's conception of what women would like to believe about a character like Nick. It's more convenient to buy the idea that a man raised by showgirls would learn to view women as objects, when in reality he'd probably be the kind of guy who enjoys listening to women, pleasing them and just being around them. And he probably wouldn't leave the seat up, either.

The jokes in "What Women Want" are facile and cheap, riffing on the blandest and most tiresome stereotypes about men and women. There's one particularly pathetic joke in which Nick pretends he's gay to hose down a female admirer's feelings for him. The movie is unbecomingly catty as well. Valerie Perrine and Delta Burke are the two "yes" women who work for Nick, rushing to help him take off his coat and fetch his coffee when he gets to the office. When he first realizes he's received his special "gift," he's surrounded by feminine chatter all morning, until he reaches the inner sanctum of his office, where all he hears is what his two assistants actually say -- the not-so-subtle subtext is that they have no thoughts.

The female characters here don't provide many challenges for the actresses who play them. Marisa Tomei, an appealing and astute actress, has a thankless role here as a coffee shop worker who's smitten with Nick. And Hunt's performance is the kind of thing that will very quickly make her tiresome as an actress. Her Darcy is a sharp cookie who nevertheless hides layers of insecurity underneath, just the sort of character that women are supposed to immediately identify with.

But Meyers has no use for Hunt's whiplash comic timing here. Instead, Hunt gets plenty of opportunities to be stern and no-nonsense: She's really good at making her mouth look like a straight little blank line. Her characterization of Darcy seems like nothing more than a conceit, a ruse to fool us into thinking that maybe she's not so vulnerable, so that later we can pretend we're surprised to see that she has weaknesses.

"What Women Want" is full of those false surprises, a suggestion (if not a confirmation) of Hollywood's belief that genuine surprises are the last thing moviegoers want. It's a shame, because after his ponderous and bloated performance in the equally loathsome "The Patriot," the world could use a surprise from Gibson. I've long adored Gibson as an actor, partly because he's smart and intuitive, and partly because he's gorgeous to look at. His best performances may not be his flashiest, loudest ones. In 1997's "Conspiracy Theory," as a mentally unbalanced cabdriver who concocts and disseminates elaborate theories about government conspiracies, his performance was a small marvel, a clutch of nervous tics and twitches that he plays beautifully for laughs -- and then you realize he's turning a vulnerable and guarded character inside-out before your very eyes.

But Gibson doesn't work any magic in "What Women Want," short of turning on his crinkly smile now and then. His comic gifts are woefully underused here: If it's amusing at all to see him prancing around his bathroom in those pantyhose, it's funny only in a fleeting, predictable way.

Gibson moves beautifully, with a comic grace that's infinitely sexy, and you get a taste of that in an early scene where, bounding out of his apartment building, he tells the doorwoman he's feeling "fit as a dancing bear." The line is funny because it perfectly suits the way he's just come tripping lightly through his building's doors, like a stocky athlete with Gene Kelly in his heart. Later, when he breaks into an impromptu soft-shoe to Frank Sinatra's version of "I Won't Dance," the movie seems to skid to a stop for just a moment, taking a hard right turn into the dream world that we wish movies could be. I wanted to watch him dance forever.

But the sequence lasts barely a minute, and the rest of the time Gibson simply goes through the motions. He's an exceptionally charming comic actor, and watching him here is hardly torture. But the performance feels constrained, as if he knows he's the picture's chief marketing draw -- in essence, its dancing bear.

That's part of the air of calculation and heavily perfumed cynicism that hangs over "What Woman Want" like a poisonous cloud. If the final vision of "What Women Want" is at all grounded in reality, it's almost too depressing to think about. Women want men to listen to and understand them, and they also want men to tell them what they want to hear. It's much more cheering to think of "What Women Want" as an extended commercial for Hollywood's idea of what it thinks women want. At one point in the movie Darcy, referring to the buying power of women, admonishes her assembled advertising minions, "We can't afford not to have a piece of the $40 billion pie." Neither can the movie industry. Now it's just waiting to see if we'll bite.

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