Saw What Women Want while in Kansas City.
Gibson throws his hat into the romantic comedy ring and while the results aren't anything special, his often underrated versatility saves his personal bacon. When he waltzed around his penthouse apartment with a hat and a hat rack to croonings of the original Blue Eyes, I considered my $8 well spent.
Which was a good thing, because the movie never again meshes as well after Gibson's retro-pig Nick Marshall slips on bath beads while putting on mascara and a turqoise Wonderbra, falls into a tub of water just three seconds ahead of a hairdryer, and wakes up with the ability to read women's most innermost thoughts to discover that Chicago chicks really don't have any to speak of.
Director Nancy Meyers' weaknesses are all on display here--lightweight fluff snappy dialog that seeks to distract from sadly undeveloped characters and plots that irritate upon close inspection. The only women given even a small smidgeon of dignity, god forbid a personality, are Hunt and one of my favorite recent kid stars, Ashley Johnson, all grown up as Gibson's daughter. The rest of the distaff are humiliated, patronized, sneered at, and, in Marisa Tomei's case, raped so thoroughly that I'm surprised she didn't press charges. (What the hell happened to Tomei, anyway?)
The writers clearly try to do something interesting with Hunt's character and fail, primarily because Hunt is miscast as a smart, tough creative director at the ad agency where Marshall works, but this effort appears to have exhausted their creative energy. The rest of the stereotypes come straight out of plot by the numbers: coffee house waitress/"actress", estranged daughter, ex-wife on the make for a millionaire, ambitious and underutilized secretary, middle-aged hens, and bedraggled, spectacled, suicidal waif.
But even had the basic flaws been addressed, I still would have felt this was an opportunity wasted. All I could think of in watching the movie is that Labute or Solondz should have taken on the project and show what women really think. If nothing else, it would reassure men that really, women can be just as rotten as guys are. They just have better publicists.
But I'm thinking that's not going to happen any time soon. Meanwhile, back in the real world, you're left with a stodgy but serviceable comedy with some genuinely enjoyable moments, a sublime soundtrack, gorgeous set design, and Gibson. Which ought to be enough to give Mel his third $100 million movie of the year. Has that ever been done before?
Saw What Women Want while in Kansas City.
Gibson throws his hat into the romantic comedy ring and while the results aren't anything special, his often underrated versatility saves his personal bacon. When he waltzed around his penthouse apartment with a hat and a hat rack to croonings of the original Blue Eyes, I considered my $8 well spent.
Which was a good thing, because the movie never again meshes as well after Gibson's retro-pig Nick Marshall slips on bath beads while putting on mascara and a turqoise Wonderbra, falls into a tub of water just three seconds ahead of a hairdryer, and wakes up with the ability to read women's most innermost thoughts to discover that Chicago chicks really don't have any to speak of.
Director Nancy Meyers' weaknesses are all on display here--lightweight fluff snappy dialog that seeks to distract from sadly undeveloped characters and plots that irritate upon close inspection. The only women given even a small smidgeon of dignity, god forbid a personality, are Hunt and one of my favorite recent kid stars, Ashley Johnson, all grown up as Gibson's daughter. The rest of the distaff are humiliated, patronized, sneered at, and, in Marisa Tomei's case, raped so thoroughly that I'm surprised she didn't press charges. (What the hell happened to Tomei, anyway?)
The writers clearly try to do something interesting with Hunt's character and fail, primarily because Hunt is miscast as a smart, tough creative director at the ad agency where Marshall works, but this effort appears to have exhausted their creative energy. The rest of the stereotypes come straight out of plot by the numbers: coffee house waitress/"actress", estranged daughter, ex-wife on the make for a millionaire, ambitious and underutilized secretary, middle-aged hens, and bedraggled, spectacled, suicidal waif.
But even had the basic flaws been addressed, I still would have felt this was an opportunity wasted. All I could think of in watching the movie is that Labute or Solondz should have taken on the project and show what women really think. If nothing else, it would reassure men that really, women can be just as rotten as guys are. They just have better publicists.
But I'm thinking that's not going to happen any time soon. Meanwhile, back in the real world, you're left with a stodgy but serviceable comedy with some genuinely enjoyable moments, a sublime soundtrack, gorgeous set design, and Gibson. Which ought to be enough to give Mel his third $100 million movie of the year. Has that ever been done before?
