What Women Want

This eagerly awaited goodbye to Mel Gibson’s Mad Max macho self-image opens withsome zany moments. Nick (Gibson’s character) is your typical male of the bygoneera—brought up in Las Vegas under the shadow of a showgirl mother, he is the productof a time when girls were tough, glamorous and not so uppity about getting a pat on thebottom. Lost in the kickass but prudish New World of womanpower and its music (where hegets to sleep but not to speak to them), Nick is made to return time and time again tojazz.

Then he discovers that he can hear what women think—instead of becoming repentantabout being a “cocky bullshitter” (this is what he hears most of the time), heputs the “knowledge” to good use. He steals the creative ideas of hisrival-cum-boss (Helen Hunt) and wins a big account for his advertising firm which isstruggling to find a foothold in a consumer market dominated by women.

Mack the Knife, the representative jazz tune of the ’40s and the ’50s, playsin the background as Nick enacts his game. The device speaks of the contemporarymale’s rather funny alienation. It also furnishes a good example of a didactic use ofmusic in cinema. Later, however, Nick begins repenting—his sly charm is still alivewhen he shrugs off a priggish/horny girlfriend (Marisa Tomei) by posing as a gay. Theirencounter also highlights the basic comedy of contemporary sex where you have to pick awoman’s brains before making her squirm in ecstasy.

But then he falls for his boss—overcome by love, he confesses to his misdemeanour.She fires him as a co-worker but takes him on as a reformed, soft lover. You realise, atthis point, that ingenuity has long since given way to a feel-good political correctnessand that the fun stands spoiled. Gibson, who otherwise puts up a credible show, suddenlybecomes awkward — Hunt, who remains strangely reticent throughout the movie, alsostays rigid. Her performance suffers in the bargain.

In fact, her character remains the weakest link of the thin (and often weary)plot—she’s too one-dimensional for a nice career girl uneasy about the addedreputation of being a man-eater and a bitch. Here, as elsewhere, director Nancy Meyers,herself a woman, seems to be succumbing to the pressure of underplaying theall-too-obvious contradictions of girl power.