If you're looking for something intellectually stimulating, forget it. If you're looking for insightful or innovative, wrong movie. If you think you'll learn something about women, not here. And if you're looking for fall off your chair funny, this ain't it.

The gimmick here is that a successful but chauvinistic ad agent named Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) can hear what women are thinking. But the funniest scenes come before he even gets this strange power.

He thinks he's up for a promotion in his company where he has a reputation for using sex-based ads. Instead of a promotion, he finds that the company has hired a woman from another agency to be his new boss. The woman, Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt), has a reputation for being tough as nails. The agency president (Alan Alda) believes that they need to develop more ads aimed at women and that Nick's bikini oriented approach won't work.

Well Nick isn't going to take this lightly. He plans to sabotage Darcy's efforts and make her look bad, while at the same time proving that HE can come up with a good, woman oriented ad campaign.

Part of his plan is to pretend to be nice and cooperative with Darcy so he can steal her ideas. Another part is to actually dedicate some time to trying to understand women, or at least the products they use. He tries on pantyhose, mascara and nail polish, he waxes his leg hair, and he applies a hair volumizer. He doesn't seem to be learning much from trying these products, but his somewhat estranged daughter learns a little about her dad when she walks in on him in the middle of these product tests.

After this embarrassment, he has an accident that imparts him with the ability to hear what women are thinking. He tries to use this to outsmart and outmaneuver the women in his life, but the more he hears, the more they become people instead of objects. His new found compassion makes him want to change, but that's a bigger challenge than learning to empathize with women.

Obviously this power helps him with his plans to undermine Darcy. But besides her ad ideas, he also learns her hopes, ambitions, fears, etc. She too is becoming 'human' and therefore harder to manipulate and abuse.

The daughter, Alexandra (Ashley Johnson) gives Nick one more woman to learn about and relate to but seemed unnecessary to me. It's bad enough he's expected to learn what women want, but everyone knows that teenagers are something else again. Nick learns that she is planning on going 'all the way' with her older boyfriend on prom night. If he had a brain he'd know that without using the power. The few laughs provided by her character aren't worth the screen time used to set them up. Plus, cute little "Chrissy Seaver" from "Growing Pains" grew up to be not so cute, not so great an actress, and she looked a little old for the part to me.

Besides Darcy and the superfluous Alexandra, Nick also has Lola, the waitress he's been hitting on; Gigi, his copyrighter; Eve & Margo, his assistants; and Erin, the file girl.

Lola is portrayed well by Marisa Tomei who has played similar roles a little too often. Lola is a slightly ditzy but cute girl working in a coffee shop. Nick learns by listening to her thoughts that she thinks he is cute and likes him but has been hurt many times and is wary of taking a chance. This is perfect information for the predator to use to get her in the sack. But what will happen later when he doesn’t call?

Lauren Holly plays Gigi who is supposed to be intelligent and educated but under-appreciated. She gets Nick his coffee and runs errands for him but could do more. Her intelligence fails when it comes to relationships though. Her boyfriend also takes advantage of her so she's as miserable at home as she is at work. Nick's power helps him learn about her dissatisfaction with her job and her indecision regarding her love life. Does he care?

Delta Burke plays Eve and Valerie Perrine plays Margo. The most telling thing about Nick's 2 assistants is that, when he can hear women's thoughts, he still hears nothing around them!

And the last notable character is Erin. Judy Greer does an excellent job here as the shy, insecure, unappreciated and mostly unnoticed file clerk. Nick discovers that she frequently entertains suicidal thoughts. Perhaps to illustrate that he can't change overnight, he notes these suicidal tendencies but doesn't do anything about it until she doesn't show up for work one day. Did she? Would she? Can he stop her? Does he care? Do I care?

Many reviewers who liked this movie thought Erin was an unnecessary sub-plot. I thought it was the only part of the plot worth my time. Though one dimensional, Erin is still a character you can care about. And if Nick can care about some obscure co-worker he barely knows, then maybe there's hope..

I don't think I'm giving anything away if I say that Nick is supposed to learn from reading minds that women are not the sex objects he always thought they were. And that this epiphany changes him from a chauvinistic pig who men like and women fear, into a sensitive and compassionate man that women love, but men don't understand.

But even after he has learned so much, and starts lecturing to his only male friend about how women should be treated, he still continues to undermine Darcy. He also forgets his daughters impending de-flowering, and continues to ignore broken-hearted Lola and suicidal Erin. So the question isn't, "what do women want?" but rather "what can nick learn?"; and the answer is, not much.

The gimmick provided a few laughs, most of which you've seen if you've caught the trailer. But as I said already, the funniest parts have nothing to do with the gimmick.

If the story was just Nick being put under intense pressure to find out how to empathize with, and sell to, women, it could have been more insightful and a lot funnier. I'd much rather have seen him struggle to learn these things than have the knowledge handed to him effortlessly and then not appreciate the gift.

Or if you think you need a gimmick, have this ability given to Nick by the Devil. We could meet the Devil and watch him encourage Nick to use the power against women. Then the human side, buried deep in Nick's soul, could struggle when he realizes how much pain he has caused. His repentance would have been better motivated and much more satisfying to watch. But hey, it's not my job to fix Hollywood's screw-ups.

As it is, this movie is not worth your time. If it comes on cable and you can see it for free, watch an old Archie Bunker rerun instead. You'll laugh more and learn more.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD