What Women Want

Directed by Nancy Meyers, What Women Want follows notorious, unapologetic playboy Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) as he finds himself able to hear women’s thoughts after surviving a bathroom electrocution. It’s a high-concept premise that’s employed to decidedly erratic yet mostly agreeable effect by Meyers, as the filmmaker, armed with Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa’s screenplay, delivers a far-from-sprightly endeavor that benefits from its old-school atmosphere and proliferation of affable performances – with, in terms of the latter, Gibson’s completely captivating work elevating the proceedings on a continuing basis and ensuring that his character’s eventual romance of a coworker (Helen Hunt’s Darcy Maguire) is as satisfying and engaging as one might’ve hoped. And although Meyers handles the picture’s shift from breezy comedy to deliberately-paced romance surprisingly well, What Women Want, saddled with a bloated 127 minute runtime, admittedly does peter out to a fairly palpable degree before arriving at its thoroughly satisfying conclusion. (There are undoubtedly a few too many subplots that could and should have been excised, with this particularly true of everything involving Marisa Tomei’s needless figure.) In spite of such deficiencies, however, What Women Want generally comes off as a pervasively entertaining and likeable endeavor that nicely (and effectively) exploits its larger-than-life setup.

*** out of ****