What Men Want (2019) - Movie Review

Situations like this are why I’m not as staunchly anti-remake as most others. What Women Want is an awful movie, the kind of attempt at gender analysis that does everyone a disservice and finds that lovely middle ground between hating men and hating women in equal measure. It’s really sad to think that the idea of casting Mel Gibson as the lead in a romantic comedy isn’t even in the top 10 worst decisions that went into making that pile of utter garbage.

But at the same time, the concept at its heart about being able to read the minds of the opposite sex is something that has potential for something that isn’t painful to sit through. So naturally, when this remake was announced, I admit to being a bit sceptical at first… but then I watched the original in full and realised that there’s nowhere to go but up with this story. And thankfully, this film actually does that.

For a start, this isn’t nearly as fixated on dropping truth bombs about men. This isn’t here to make an example out of anyone in a flashy way like the original did. Instead, this gets into more grounded ideas like corporate meetings being one big boys’ club that Ali (Taraji P. Henson on FIYAH in the lead) has to deal with. We get moments of intersectionality with her position as a black woman working at a company dominated by white men, but for the most part, this plays out more like a character piece, with Ali’s arc involving her learning to actually listen to people. Not just the opposite sex, like the mesmerising triteness of the tagline for the original, but everyone else around her as well.

It definitely helps that the film’s brief stares at the notion of tokenism ends up being followed through with the production proper, starting with the casting and going from there. Admittedly, Tracy Morgan is the kind of comedian who is so annoying that I almost miss Mel Gibson in comparison, but otherwise, it’s all solid from Aldis Hodge as the love interest to Richard ‘Shaft’ Roundtree as Ali’s father to Erykah goddamn Badu as a psychic who gets all of this started. Beyond that, between the main fascination with sports stars (basketballers in particular) and the frequent references to Muhammad Ali, this feels like it’s tapping into the right cultural veins to make this film’s mere existence seem worthwhile.

Of course, just being able to outperform the original isn’t exactly a tough thing to do; the choice of lead actor already secured this as doing better than that dreck. Beyond that, it’s honestly still contained the same middling display of humour. It still banks on clichés to make things work, just different clichés, like how a bulk of the film relies on the main character lying to everyone around her just so the Third-Act Break-Up has retroactive precedent. I mean, the main message here of men and women ultimately wanting the same things like happiness and personal security is solid, but the jokes woven around it aren’t exactly gut-busters.

But honestly, I’m still fine with all that. As I got into at the start of this year, I have no problem with filmmakers wanting to make improvements on the cinema of yesteryear; hell, it can even result in some outright impressive work. If this story has to exist in the cinematic canon, I am a lot happier with this film bearing that story than its predecessor. Take that for what it’s worth.