The comedy that nobody wanted
What Men Want (R16, 117 mins) Directed by Adam Shankman Reviewed by
Back in 2000, there was a romantic-comedy (and I’m using both words in their loosest possible interpretation) called What Women Want, starring Mel Gibson running the full gamut of his comedic personae, from smug to rancid and back again, over the course of two fairly interminable hours.
The premise of the film was that Gibson had magically acquired the power to hear what women were thinking. And that he would use his newfound gifts, firstly to advance his advertising agency career, and then to acquire some of them ‘‘learnings’’ Steve Hansen loves so much. In Gibson’s case, this boiled down to the importance of telling the truth and treating people with respect.
Given the trajectory of Gibson’s career and personal life in the next decade, perhaps he could have taken the film’s script a little closer to heart.
A gender swapped remake of What Women Want, on the face of it, is a pretty cute idea. The world has thankfully moved on, a little, from presenting oblivious narcissism as the foundational instincts of a comedy lead. And so this What Men Want arrives seemingly with the potential to be a smart and maybe darkly funny reevaluation of all the attitudes and beliefs the original film never quite got around to really questioning.
Which What Men Want immediately squanders by being pretty much the laziest, most nonthreatening and predictable iteration of its premise that it could possibly be.
At the centre of every scene is Taraji P Henson (Hidden Figures), giving it everything she has to hold the project together. Henson’s ambitious sports agent (cue celebrity cameos) has been passed over for promotion.
She opines that is only because the all-male board of directors are uncomfortable with a woman’s success. Her colleagues tell her it is because she doesn’t relate well to men and comes across as a bully.
The script, unforgivably, then tries to entertain both points of view, before finally coming down on Henson’s side in a drop-the-mic finale that is as unearned as it is predictable. Around Henson, Aldis Hodge (Hidden Figures) is fine as potential boyfriend Will, while Tracy Morgan (30 Rock )hasa strong game as the overbearing Dad of a young athlete at the centre of a bidding war.
Journeyman director Adam Shankman (Hairspray) directs like he has a bus to catch, with every scene made up of the minimum number of standard frames and the performers seemingly never given the time to explore what any scene or line might actually be able to deliver.
The out-takes and blooper reel, all starring Erykah Badu as a fauxpsychic, delivered the only laugh I got out of the entire film. What Men Want is an idea wasted and an opportunity rejected.