Metacritic Film

What Women Want

Starring Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei, Bette Midler, and Lauren Holly

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexual content and language

Paramount Pictures
Romance
127 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters December 15, 2000

When Nick Marshall (Gibson), an ad executive and male chauvinist has an accident, he finds he has gained the ability to hear what women are thinking. As time passes, this phenomenon starts to change his behavior.

WRITTEN BY
Josh Goldsmith
Cathy Yuspa (also story)
Diane Drake (story)

DIRECTED BY
Nancy Meyers

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

47 / 100

Critic Reviews

88 Baltimore Sun
A frequently hilarious exercise in one sex desperately trying to figure out the other.
75 Philadelphia Inquirer
A winner.
75 USA Today
Yummy yet empty.
75 Chicago Tribune Marc Caro
Delivers on the promise of its playful premise, thanks to some sly gender role reversals and Gibson's willingness to play along.
75 New York Daily News
A merry romantic comedy in the screwball tradition.
75 Chicago Sun-Times
If the movie is imperfect, it's not boring and is often very funny, as in a solo dance that Nick does in his apartment, to Frank Sinatra singing "I Won't Dance."
75 Entertainment Weekly
Gibson, in a disarmingly nimble, fast break performance, makes Nick's new hyperempathy look like the essence of virile panache.
63 New York Post
Adequately funny but predictable sitcom
63 Miami Herald
A wobbly fantasy that relies on the actor's mischievous energy and rakish charisma for its laughs.
63 Charlotte Observer
Without Gibson, this soufflé would fall pancake-flat.
60 Variety
Sheer energy and audience allure to burn, even if numerous speed bumps cause many of the comic possibilities to go tumbling overboard.
58 Portland Oregonian
It's never subtle or clever, but it's big, loud and clear.
55 Mr. Showbiz
As classic romantic comedy goes, it ain't no "Tootsie."
50 LA Weekly
Narrow definitions of femininity limit the comedy and the romance.
50 Film.com
This is not a great comedy, but it has some honest laughs, a few touching moments.
50 The New York Times
Starts with a great idea, but the movie's potential drops faster than the tech stocks on the Nasdaq.
50 Austin Chronicle
It's like 90 minutes of teasing foreplay, and then, just when it's about to get really good, your partner rolls over and goes to sleep.
50 Boston Globe
Disappoints.
50 Christian Science Monitor
The dialogue isn't quite as sparkling and the plot twists aren't quite as snappy as you want them to be. And the story keeps rambling on after its oomph runs wearisomely thin.
50 San Francisco Chronicle
The movie's gimmick for airing the contents of a woman's head is not unlike that used for the dogs and tots in those "Look Who's Talking" movies.
50 Slate
The picture has some fun slapstick set pieces and an inventively manic turn by Gibson.
50 Washington Post
Gibson and the overexposed Hunt don't exactly burn up the screen, not that it much matters. The charm isn't in the relationship, it's in Gibson's puckish appeal.
50 Washington Post
Fans of bubbly romances can consider this a thumbs up. I call it a clenched-teeth concession at best.
40 Los Angeles Times
A vaguely amusing formulaic comedy with a premise that turns out to be more discomforting than endearing.
40 TV Guide
A wildly overblown, unpleasantly smirky mess of a film.
40 Film.com
The scene doesn't amount to much more than a logical extension of its lightweight premise.
40 Village Voice
Gibson has never lacked chemistry with his leading ladies, from Sigourney Weaver in "The Year of Living Dangerously" to Julia Roberts in "Conspiracy Theory," but faced with the awkward Hunt -- Hollywood's bland antidote to the Lolita syndrome -- he doesn't even try.
40 Time
It just runs on and on -- like a slightly stupid story you wish you hadn't overheard in a singles bar.
40 Newsweek
Has its heart in the right place, but its funnybone is out of joint.
35 TNT RoughCut
Shallow characters the audience cares little about, an unbelievable situation rather than a potent plot, and, for those who don’t find men-in-pantyhose or poodle-poop jokes hilarious, not many funny lines.
30 Chicago Reader
Would have proved the point if it weren't so mechanically scripted.
20 Dallas Observer
Really, what women want is what all of us want: a decent movie, something vaguely insightful and occasionally funny. This isn't that movie.
20 Salon.com
Aggressively offensive.

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