What Men Want Review

What Men Want is gender swap remake of the forgettable 2000 rom-com What Women Wants. This was a project that few people wanted and the final product was not worth it.

Alison “Ali” Davis (Taraji P. Henson) is a gifted sports agent who believes she’s going to be made a partner. When this doesn’t come to be Ali goes out on a bachelorette party where she drinks some questionable tea and gets a head injury that results with her being able to hear men’s thoughts. Ali decides to use her new powers to land a huge client and a handsome man for herself.

What Men Want is a broad comedy and aims for the lowest common dominator. It’s a film where much of the humour comes from mugging, slapstick, and humiliation. Despite having an R-Rating which allows it use the f word it an unoriginal, safe comedy.

The R-rated Hollywood comedy is an overstuffed genre and the one I am most numb to. Whilst there are some occasional diamonds in the rough like Game Night and Blockers many of these films have a standard Hollywood template with predictable plot-points.  What Men Want is no exception – it is a film where you can call out and predict the events early on. The best R-Rated comedies have heart or inventive, What Men Want doesn’t have either.

Predictability is forgivable if a comedy is funny but this fails on that front. This is a film that has an Oscar-nominated actress as its lead and all she gets to do is scream and act in bewilderment. She was wasted in this role, as were many other actors like Max Greenfield. What Men Want was not helped by having the perpetually unfunny Tracy Morgan as a rising basketball star’s father.

What Men Want does have some funny moments and characters which salvage the film. Erykah Badu as the Haitian psychic was one of them, mainly because of her side job as a drug dealer. Kellan Lutz was one of the big surprises as the hunky man who Ali wants to bed and they was a shocking punch -line. Josh Brener as Ali’s assistant was distracting because he looked a lot like Jacob Rees-Mogg with his round glasses.

What Men Want is happening in the wake of growing female empowerment movement and the film does touch on these issues. The key word is touch. There is sexual discrimination in the workplace, Ali is working in a masculine environment and left out of key events despite her talent. There is also the issue of racism but this is even more fleeting – only rearing its ugly head for one brief moment.

The most charitable description of What Men Want is its 2019 equivalent to I Feel Pretty. Both were well-meaning, female-centric comedies that want to looks at some important issues but weak in the humour department.