Mark Reviews Movies: WHAT MEN WANT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 7, 2019

Perhaps we need a remake of the romantic comedy What Women Want, and maybe we don't. That's a query that isn't answered by What Men Want, which is supposedly based on that earlier movie. In theory, crediting all of the writers associated with that previous movie is probably more of a legal necessity, since the basic gimmick—except for one key difference, of course—is the same, or an attempt to market this new kind-of-sort-of-another-version as something familiar. This is a loose adaptation at best, or maybe it's actually for the best that there's little reason to lump this movie together with the other one.

The point is that I don't remember much about Nancy Meyers' 2000 movie. I do recall that it was about a jerk who, by way of an accident involving water and electricity, gained the power to hear women's thoughts, before eventually learning an important lesson about how much of a jerk he actually is.

This movie has a similar setup, except that it's a woman who, by way of funky tea provided by a psychic and a bump on the head, gains the ability to hear men's thoughts. She also learns a lesson, which is prompted by the character literally stating, "The lesson I learned," and going forward from there.

The actual lesson doesn't matter much here, or maybe it's simply that the lesson doesn't make much sense. The movie—directed by Adam Shankman and written by Tina Gordon Chism, Peter Huyck, and Alex Gregory—presents a professional woman, who's overlooked for a much-deserved promotion in favor of a younger, less experienced, and seemingly dunderheaded man. She's Ali Davis (Taraji P. Henson), a sports agent at a lucrative firm based in Atlanta, whose clients include a number of accomplished and famous athletes. She's as good as, if not better than, the men around her. The company's president (played by Brian Bosworth) insists that he runs a meritocracy, but it certainly doesn't seem that way.

The movie firmly establishes that Ali is passed over for a partnership at the firm simply because she's a woman, her clients are mostly women, and the company is run like a boys' club. That's the primary context of the plot when Ali, while participating in a bachelorette party for one of her friends, ends up drinking that tea prepared by a shady psychic (played by Erykah Badu) and knocks her head on the stage of a club.

After she awakens in a hospital, Ali quickly learns, with the help of her personal assistant Brandon (Josh Brener), that she can hear men's inner thoughts. One of the movie's most amusing gags is when, after maybe an hour or so of this nightmare—overhearing men objectifying women or thinking how cool it would be to be able to defecate on the sidewalk like a dog or determining which actor is their favorite Batman—Ali dives on her office couch, puts a pillow over her head, and starts yelling, "Make it stop!" It's funny, as they say, because it's kind of true.

Beyond the swap in genders, the biggest narrative difference between this movie and its official-but-not-really forebear is that, while the man in the first movie used his powers to be an even bigger jerk (before learning that's a bad thing), Ali uses her ability as way to get what she actually deserves. The plot involves the firm attempting to sign Jamal Barry (Shane Paul McGhie), a college basketball player who's projected to be the top draft pick for the pros. If Ali can seal the deal, she's pretty much guaranteed to become a partner, so she comes up with a strategy listening to the thoughts of Jamal, the kid's overbearing father Joe (Tracy Morgan, improvising up a storm), and her co-workers. She counters the tactics of her colleagues, because, well, she's better than them.

Meanwhile, Ali also tries (and tries again) to start a relationship with Will (Aldis Hodge), a widower and single father, who doesn't have a negative thought in his head. That subplot has Ali pretending that they're married, without telling him the ruse, in order to impress Joe. It is, as one might expect, as unnecessarily convoluted as it must be in order for Ali to learn a lesson here.

There could be something to this new take on the previously established gimmick. As a comedy in which a woman exerts righteous mind-reading revenge/one-upmanship in the workplace, the movie's heart and humor are in the right place. It also tries, quite unpersuasively, to convince us that there is something—anything, really—wrong with Ali's tactics. It pulls the complicated fib involving Will out of nowhere, just so that she can learn about really listening outside of her job and figuring out that, while secret mind-reading is one thing, lying is something else entirely.

What Men Want tries to do far too much, and much of it is too much of a distraction from the stuff that does work. The simplicity of movie's premise-variation, as well as a more meaningful focus on the workplace story, might have been enough.

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