the audience applauded

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is a reasonable comedy with Mel Gibson serving as the primary eye candy for women. Fair enough. His character is show as pretty much pathetic and various women as his victims: ex-wife, daughter, house-keeper, subordinate, date, boss - all of them. So the narrative is roughly - a good for nothing but good looking loser is not qualified and inflicts pain on women in his life whereas they are mostly nice people, tolerate and even accept him. Whoa!

It's 2017, and let's face it, by now the world is filled with Mel Gibson haters, following the perception of anti-Semiticsm that went all too viral and several real world incidents of bad behavior. "What Women Want" takes us back to a point in Mel Gibson's career in which he had established himself as a top rated leading man for 20 years. Except for some roles in which Gibson had portrayed a more manic type personality - the "Lethal Weapon" series, in particular - movie goers would have considered him an actor for dramatic roles. In "What Women Want," however, Mel Gibson emerged in the year 2000 - the some year in which he starred in a very dramatic role in "The Patriot" - as a rather brilliant comedic actor. Gibson's casting as an ad executive who epitomizes male chauvinism before an accident involving electrocution enables him to "get inside" women's heads, which leads to a newfound empathy for the sake of all women, scores as "genius" for both Gibson and director Nancy Meyers. A rather incredible supporting cast has been assembled, starting with Helen Hunt, fresh off an Oscar winning best actress performance in "As Good as It Gets." Because some viewers will focus on how great the first half of this movie is, the second half will tend to get dismissed as being perhaps a little too sentimental and ultimately and eventually predictable. OK, perhaps that gives the first half of the movie a "10" score; the second half, at worst, deserves a score of "8," and that averages out to a "9" in my book. Performances are dead-on great, and the soundtrack, which also helps promote Mel Gibson's dancing talent in one scene that pays tribute somewhat to the era of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, is superb. "What Women Want" could be the movie that "women want," but this guy says everybody "needs" this most enjoyable movie and WILL WANT to view it a second time (at least).

Mel Gibson's teeth are super white on the movie's cover art. Like white as the driven snow. Not a funny movie not a romantic movie its billed as a romantic comedy, perhaps done so out of irony? Yes, somewhere deep down inside this movie is an actual good movie, but whatever depth that is, its utterly unaccessible. This movie's main problem: they take a good idea ( macho creep suddenly can read woman's minds and over the course of the story grows and changes ) and approach it from the most cowardly angle. Were the writers truly courageous the movie could have exposed the ridiculous nature of the human condition for both sexes, instead the film makers give us recycled jokes and ideas. Good news everybody, we can do better!

This could have been the subject of this movie as Mel can heard women's thoughts as well as canine's ones: we never know why and if there's a hidden message behind this. Anyway, he prefers to tune with women and Mel is indeed comfortable in a comedy: his telepathic ability inspire some really funny moments, especially regarding the life at work: now, i understand why we are so tired coming back home: telling something and thinking the opposite is indeed tiring! However, it's true: we must get along all day with people who are sometimes worst than awful! Beyond, this original idea is not used to its maximum as the movie sticks to the credo of American movie: over there, work stops at the manager level and happens in big corporate firm, usually in entertainment (see De Palma's "Passion"): Thus, as real job is a bit more soliciting for people, audience should felt alienated. This was my feeling as I'm really fed up to follow the life of those privileged, living in big condos, needing staff for everything. What's revealing here is that Mel precisely falls in love with his big boss but maybe an humanist consciousness makes him notice the small archivist as well, maybe the only one true character here!In addition, the movie is a huge brainwash for advertising, which is the most devious activity ever, as its goal is to make think that the moon is full of green eye. As they said in Groland, having Nike sneakers, we don't play basketball like Mike, neither having Mont Blanc pen, write novels like Heminghway, etc...At last, i really don't understand the need to take being gay as pretext to end an relationship. So, this movie has really some excellent moment of brilliance but also very disappointing ones. But it was great to see Mel being a cool jerk and for that someway, it was very unusual and refreshing!