What women want has plagued universal man through the ages, not to mention yesterday. But it's simple really. I looked it up.

Besides wanting it all, women want:

To have a conversation, which means you listen.

To be left alone, which means not now.

To take long, slow walks on a South Seas island beach.

To control the remote.

For those who'd like to have lots of, y'know, long, slow walks with Mel Gibson, I've got a movie for you -- What Women Want.

In it, Gibson plays a misogynist Chicago advertising executive who gets electrocuted in his bathtub, and suddenly is able to read the minds of the opposite sex.

I know what guys are thinking -- it's a nightmarish horror flick. But this is not. A giddy, goofy Gibson hoot, this is.

The bonus is getting two Gibsons in one.

To establish his character's brutish ways, you get the alpha male Mel, a self-obsessed divorced father of one who knows how to sell beer and bed babes at his swanky digs.

Later, post-electrocution, there is a glimpse of the sensitive journeyman Mel, dazzling with his deep blue and caring eyes. His renaissance occurs after he realizes women are people, too. Some resolution.

You guessed it. Besides first-rate laugh lines thanks to co-writers Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, some silly but effective Mel-does-girlie-stuff stunts and flashes of the upper half of a hard-bodied Gibson, there is something else. That would be a few earnestly defined meaningful moments to appease those who like to ponder while they guffaw.

Don't take this comedy feature too seriously, though.

For a battle of the sexes social study, What Women Want ranks somewhere above Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson and Doris Day and far below When Harry Met Sally with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan.

Helen Hunt gets to play the Meg-Doris part as a sharp new creative director hired over the ad shop's star he-man ad exec, because troglodyte is out, and modern woman is in.

As the plot turns, and it does with an obvious and calculated spin, Hunt's new millennium female up-and-comer starts falling for the post-shocked "I hear women's voices" kinder, gentler gent. Natch, and pass the cliches.

For pure hokum hijinks, What Women Want works splendidly, although curious cameos from Marisa Tomei (a coffee shop swooner), and Delta Burke and Valerie Perrine (dingbat office assistants) prove to be pointless.

A better bit player addition comes from Alan Alda, who doesn't whine Alda time. What he does instead is wisely define the weaselly looking-out-for-number-one syndrome as the advertising firm's boss.

Ashley Johnson is in control as chauvinist daddy's daughter, who recalls that her father has been so close he's been "like an uncle to me."

Bette Midler, doing another Bette Midler variation, gets a giggle as a joint-toking psychiatrist during a singular session with the spooked Gibson guy.

Credit also goes to director Meyers, who seems to have cornered the market on nutty fluff, as illustrated by her equally enjoyable redo of The Parent Trap a few years ago.

What women moviegoers want: If it's a few light and lively chuckles, they'll get what they need from this.

And I, a remote control guy, liked it too.

(This film is rated AA)

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