Nancy Meyers built a career on making the romantic comedy look effortless, and in 2000 she handed Mel Gibson a premise that should have been a layup: a chauvinist who can suddenly hear women’s thoughts. What Women Want has the cast, the budget and the tagline to sell that idea. What it does not have is a script willing to follow it anywhere uncomfortable.
The premise is the whole movie, so it is worth stating plainly. Nick Marshall is a Chicago advertising executive who sells products to men and seduces women with the same routine. He expects a promotion at Sloane Curtis. Instead his boss, Dan Wanamaker, announces he is hiring Nick’s rival Darcy Maguire to broaden the firm’s appeal to women.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
The Bathtub and the Hairdryer
That is the setup. The turn arrives when Nick falls into his home bathtub holding an electric hairdryer, shocks himself and is knocked unconscious. He wakes up able to hear what women are thinking.
It is a comedy mechanic, and Meyers treats it like one. Nick initially hates the ability. He learns that most women shun him and consider him sleazy. His former therapist, Dr. Perkins, tells him to use it to his advantage, pointing out that he can now answer the question Sigmund Freud died unable to answer: what do women want?
That line is the film’s best idea and it never gets a real answer. What Women Want keeps the question as a joke and lets the answer stay a punchline.
Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt
Gibson plays Nick with the grin of a man who has never been told no. The performance works in the early scenes, where the character is meant to be insufferable. It works less well once the movie asks us to like him. Hunt is the better half of the pairing, and Darcy Maguire is written as the film’s only adult.
The supporting cast is deep and mostly wasted. Marisa Tomei plays Lola, a coffee shop worker trying to become an actress, and Nick uses his ability to seduce her. Alan Alda is Dan Wanamaker, the boss. Lauren Holly is Gigi, Nick’s ex-wife, newly married to Ted and away on a honeymoon. Ashley Johnson plays Alex, Nick’s 15-year-old daughter.
Erin, Annie and the Office
The workplace is full of women with grievances the film notices and then drops. Judy Greer is Erin, a copy girl who is always ignored and had been turned down indirectly by Nick for a promotion. Sarah Paulson is Annie, Nick’s secretary, whose job is limited to menial errands she sees as degrading given her Ivy League education.
- Erin, the copy girl nobody promotes
- Annie, the Ivy League graduate running errands
- Lola, the actress Nick seduces with a trick
- Alex, the daughter he neglected for years
Every one of these is a live wire. What Women Want touches each and then moves on.
Alex, Cameron and the Prom Dress
The film’s most serious thread belongs to Alex. She comes to stay with Nick while Gigi and Ted are on their honeymoon. She resents his over-protectiveness when he meets her older boyfriend, Cameron.
Nick and Alex start to bond while he takes her shopping for a prom dress. Then he reads her mind and learns she intends to sleep with Cameron on prom night. He tells her Cameron is not interested in her for who she is, just for what he can do with her in bed. Alex thinks he is being over-protective and trying to sabotage her prom, and rejects him.
She is right to be suspicious of the delivery and wrong about the man. Cameron is manipulative. He abandons the relationship after Alex tells him she is not ready to sleep with him after the prom.
This is the part of What Women Want that could have carried a whole film. A father who has to earn the right to be believed, a daughter who has to learn it the hard way. Meyers stages it, gets one good scene out of the dress shop, and then hands the movie back to the ad campaign.
The Nike Ad and the Theft
Nick and Darcy spend more time together and become romantic. He also steals her idea for a new Nike campaign aimed at women. He regrets it afterward. That regret is the closest the film comes to giving Nick a real cost.
It is not enough. The theft is the one act in the movie that should be unforgivable, and What Women Want treats it as a third-act speed bump. The mind-reading gimmick keeps doing the work the character should be doing.
Rank the film’s problems and the order is not close.
- The premise is used for jokes instead of consequences.
- Nick’s change of heart is caused by a power, not by a choice.
- The women around him exist to be overheard.
- The romance resolves because the plot needs it to.
The fourth item is the one that sinks it.
What the Box Office Bought
What Women Want was released on December 15, 2000, by Paramount Pictures in the United States and Canada and by Icon Productions internationally. It ran 127 minutes. It received mixed reviews from critics and made $182 million domestically and $374.1 million worldwide against a $70 million budget, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2000.
Those numbers are not an accident. Gibson was the draw, the tagline promised a crowd-pleaser, and the film sold a fantasy in which a man’s worst quality becomes a superpower and nobody makes him pay for it.
A loose remake, What Men Want, was released in 2019, starring Taraji P. Henson, Tracy Morgan and Aldis Hodge. That version flipped the genders and kept the same engine. The engine was always the weak part.
The Verdict on What Women Want
This is a well-cast, well-funded comedy that mistakes a premise for a point of view. The film’s tagline says a man is finally listening. He is not listening. He is eavesdropping.
The scenes with Alex are the proof of what was available. Ashley Johnson plays a teenager who is angry for good reasons, and the film gives her one honest confrontation before the ad plot takes over.
The supporting cast is the other tell. Judy Greer, Sarah Paulson, Marisa Tomei and Delta Burke, who plays Eve, are assembled as evidence of what Nick has ignored, and then they are scenery. A movie that can hear women’s thoughts has surprisingly little interest in them.
What Women Want is not a disaster. It is a hit that should have been better, and its $374.1 million worldwide gross is the clearest sign of how little that mattered to the people who made it. The premise is a question. The film is an excuse.
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