Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

The secret to what women want has been well and truly solved since Mel Gibson was inside our minds. Now, it’s time for women to get a front row seat into the heads of the opposite sex and take bets to see if they were right all along.

The Synopsis
As one of the top agents of a male-dominated Sports Agency company, Ali (Taraji P. Henson) cannot fathom why she hasn’t made partner – again. During the festivities of her friend’s bachelorette party, Ali hits her head and wakes up with the ability to read the men’s thoughts.

Soon Ali realises her newly developed ability can do more than just read her assistant Brandon’s (Josh Brener) panicked thoughts, it’s the tool she needs to gain an advantage over her peers.

However, hearts and minds are two very different playing fields, and though she has a cheat sheet to one, it doesn’t mean she understands the rules of the other.

The Good
Though it was a little easy in terms of surrounding her with men, I liked the setting they gave Ali to navigate; sports – a world typically filled with men.

To be honest, a lot of the internal thoughts were pretty damn funny, at times it was ridiculous and others scarily accurate, but to both, in tone and comparison to the outward expression of the characters, it was where most of my laughs for this movie came from.

Gender reversing this role was a good shout, but it definitely elevated its standing by also casting a woman of colour as the lead. It opened up discussions not only about the discrimination of being a woman in the workplace and the boxes you are put in when it comes to success and relationships, but also the racial prejudice that has to be navigated daily and for that; I can never fully fault this movie.

The Bad
I said I could never fully fault this movie, not that the faults couldn’t take up the majority of my opinions.

My main annoyance is that What Men Want felt incredibly underdeveloped. The movie stuck too solidly with the core plot element – reading men’s minds, and didn’t delve deeper into building around this through subplots. There was no exploration of secondary characters or self-realisation and I kept forgetting her friends even existed. This to me stunted the movie from resonating more with the audience.

For a movie classed as a romantic comedy, I didn’t buy the romance between Ali and Will (Aldis Hodge) as there was no cute or meaningful progression in their relationship. I also didn’t find the movie that funny. Yes, I chuckled at Ali’s odd mannerisms and laughed out loud mostly at the internal thoughts, but overall the comic element also wasn’t enough to keep this movie afloat.

This could just have been me, but I thought the scenes at times went on for too long. During these periods of stagnancy, it gave me pause to realise that I wasn’t enjoying the movie as much as I should have been and wanted to.

Finally; a Mel Gibson cameo would have been fun.

The Conclusion
As far as Will Paker production movies go, What Men Want doesn’t even go to the same school as my favourites. It was a nice try at remaking an old classic because, why the heck not, everyone is doing it. It was great that they made one of the themes something that is culturally relevant to the time – but ultimately, this movie was not what Jen wants.