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Okay, so, when I was asked to guest blog for Videogum I panicked. Can I really just rely on tips all day? I should do something special! Then I heard about this movie, Wo Zhi Nu Ren Xin, or 我知女人心, or “What Women Want”… You guys! It’s a 2011 Chinese remake of the 2000 Nancy Meyers movie of the same name starring Mel Gibson and Hellen Hunt! And I rushed out and saw it last night so I could review it today! And you’re reading my review of it, right now! That’s what this post is!
You’re probably familiar with the premise of What Women Want, but I’ll reintroduce it anyway! A macho male ad executive, Sun Zigang, (Andy Lau (Mel Gibson)) thinks he’s getting a promotion but then it gets stolen from him by Li Yilong (Gong Li (Hellen Hunt)) because more consumers are women these days (what?) and the ad agency needs to know What Women Want. So on her first day, in order to get the men at the company in touch with What Women Want, she has all the men to take home tampons and lipstick and tells them to try them out. Gross. Sun gets drunk and pops some birth control pills and tries on some high heels and fish nets and then trips into the bath tub and gets electrocuted by a electric fake fish thing (it’s not shown in the trailer for some reason, but in the real movie when he gets electrocuted there was a CGI skeleton!) and when he wakes up he can hear What Women Want!
Okay! Let me start off by saying, I don’t know Chinese or anything about China. AT ALL. I am a total dumb-dumb. I couldn’t even tell what city this was set in and I kept trying. I also have never seen the original movie. I’m also homosexual and I think understanding other people is hard even when there isn’t a gender gap because the differences between two individuals is way greater than the similarities between people of the same gender which are actually pretty minor. So I kind of think the whole premise of this movie is bogus and it really should more be a movie about being psychic rather than a movie about how men don’t know What Women Want. Also, pretty much every single character in the movie is female anyway, so it pretty much already is a movie about being psychic. The only other male characters serve as a reflection of the protagonist.
Speaking of other male characters, lets talk about the dad! From what I understand, he’s an original character in the Chinese remake. He was actually a pretty good character! They show flashbacks of Sun as a child and he’s watching his father and mother drift apart because his father doesn’t understand What Women Want even though he was convinced he did. Now his mother is dead and his father regrets the fact that he couldn’t understand What Women Want before she died. His father is a singer who claims to be a tenor but constantly has to be reminded that he is actually a baritone (symbolism! Even his voice doesn’t know What Women Want!)
Like with Pierce and Jeff on Community, the dad reflects what will become of the son if he doesn’t achieve his character development at the end of the movie. From what I understand, in the original movie Mel Gibson’s mother was a Las Vegas showgirl? That’s stupid. Good job, China, you totally one upped Nancy Meyers in writing a compelling backstory.
Later in the movie Sun confides in his dad about his powers and his dad is pretty casual about it, he’s like “Huh, you can read minds? You better tell your love interest the truth, it’s almost the end of the fourth act!” Personally I would be kind of freaking out to suddenly learn that magic exists in the world. Also he can hear women’s thoughts over the phone. That’s not how phones work!
So when the movie starts he is setting up dinner dates with every single girl he sees, like a scumbag. He tries to ask this one woman in the elevator out for coffee or wine, but she says she only drinks water. He sees her again later on at his office and he says that she looks good without her glasses on and she says that he also he looks good without her glasses on (haha, that’s a good line, good one, China!) But then it turns out that elevator lady is Li Yilong (Gong Li (Hellen Hunt)) and she’s here to steal his job!
Most of the movie focuses on him using his super powers to steal her advertising ideas and make her fall in love with him. It’s weird, he is clearly falling in love with her and also stealing her ideas at the same time, and never lets up on either. Maybe he’s supposed to be an anti-hero or something? He’s just kind of a jerk for the entire movie. Also they get drunk a lot. She literally said she only drinks water and they even bring it up again and confirm that she wasn’t saying that jokingly, but she has at least six separate glasses of wine on-screen before the movie is over. Chick flicks, man! Always with the wine. We should plan an intervention for Nancy Meyers and call it “Just One More Drink!” which is totally something she would name a movie.
There’s also a subplot about Sun’s ex-wife and daughter. Apparently his marriage fell apart because he didn’t know What Women Want and now that his teenage daughter is becoming a Woman he doesn’t know What she Wants either. When the movie starts he repeatedly says that What Women Want is to get money from men, like whores, but after getting super powers he tells his daughter that What Women Want is companionship and all men want is sex. His daughter shrugs off his warnings and then near the end of the movie she gets taken advantage of by a man and Sun shows up and saves her and it was actually kind of sweet.
Anyway, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m going to tell you to go see Wo Zhi Nu Ren Xin. Why would you see it? There’s no reason for you to see it. I guess when I set out to review this movie I thought it would be hilariously bad and then I could tear it apart but it wasn’t even that bad! I mean it wasn’t great but I had a good time watching it and I was pretty invested in the story.
This always happens to me when I try to see movies ironically. I saw Beverly Hills Chihuahua under the pretense of irony but I ended up loving it sincerely and I keep getting into drunken fights at parties about how it’s actually a good movie and people just unfairly judge it by the terrible CGI trailer of dancing dogs that came before Wall-E but the movie was actually nothing like that! I actually just bought the DVD-only sequel yesterday, I’m not even joking. I also tried to see Jennifer’s Body ironically but it turned out to be a great movie. And then Troll 2 I watched on a date and it was like “haha lets put on a stupid movie to ease the transition into making out” but then I was legitimately engaged in the story I kept trying to follow the plot during what also happened to be my first sexual experience with a woman. That’s not a joke, that’s my life.
I started to feel bad about myself about halfway into the movie. Here I am chuckling at over used public domain music and overtly expositional dialog like a jerk while these nice Chinese couples are trying to enjoy the movie. On Valentine’s Day! Not only was I alone on Valentine’s Day, I was ruining it for other people! I’m like the Valentine’s Day equivalent of the Grinch. Maybe the movie isn’t even that stupid! Maybe, like Sun, the reason I’m single is because I lack the perspective to empathize with others and I view the world from a place of confident cynicism. Some days you ironically see the bad movie and some days the movie ironically sees the bad you.
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That character sounds like a real Drunken Master. #jackiechanmovies
He’s a Shanghai Knight in shining armor.
“Also, pretty much every single character in the movie is female anyway”
So I can assume that the entire female population of China is in this movie then?
I mostly watch movies full of chinese women, too. But that’s when I CAN’T get a date.
In Soviet Russia, bad movies see you!
Is it just me, or don’t women want not another “What Women Want”?
You are mistaken, werttrew. This is clearly not Mel Gibson. This is his evil parallel universe twin. Hence the goatee.
This is what happens to me when I try to date ironically, too.
Mary Worth! Love her. Have you checked this out: http://joshreads.com/
Clarification: I hate the character Mary Worth, but I love the comic strip. Wouldn’t want anyone to think I actually like that nosy woman.
Devoted fan. (The avatar is from the epic Aldo Kelrast plotline.)
Aldomania! Boy is it nice to meet other curmudgeons on the world webbings.
Yay! Other monster comic book nerds! Hi guys!
Troll 2? Jennifer’s Body? Beverly Hills Chihuahua? It’s like you have the exact opposite of good taste in movies. Tell me, what were your thoughts on Amelia?
I haven’t seen Amelia but did you know that the REAL Amelia Earhart was eaten by Coconut Crabs and they hoarded her bones in their burrows all over the island on which she died so now they don’t have her body even though they know where she crashed? Was that in the movie?
I heard THERE’S A NEW What Women Want COMING OUT AND IT’S gonna have A SHIT ton of blowjobs, PROBABLY.
I imagined him making this face while receiving a blowjob and it was probably the best/most horrifying joke my mind could’ve played on me.
in jacuzzis!
FINALLY a romantic comedy I can GET BEHIND
I thought What Women Want was a 500-year-old misogynistic stereotype, but it turns out What Women Want is a 200-year-old misogynistic stereotype. #progress
Did you guys hear about that phone message Andy Lau left on his girlfriend’s phone? He was all “你应该回家的打击我，因为我值得。”
Yikes…
Totally worth the 30 seconds to Google Translate that.
Oh that Andy Lau, he has such a Taipei personality.
When you get done watching this movie do you want to watch it again 45 minutes later?
I feel like “What Women Want” in China is to be born…
There was the joke. I was looking for it. Nice work
Does this mean we have to wait 11 years for a Chinese remake of “The Beaver?”
I tried googling “chinese beaver” to see if I could get some news for you, but my IT called and started yelling at me. Sorry.
I don’t have magic powers or anything, but I can tell you from experience that one thing Chinese women do NOT want is to be mistaken for Japanese women.
While watching the trailer, I thought about sending it to my Japanese friend and making fun of her people for remaking a Mel Gibson movie, and then I saw it mentioned that it’s from China and I felt bad about myself.
My Chinese is super-basic, but “Wo Zhi Nu Ren Xin” definitely does not mean “What Women Want.” Google Translate suggests it means “In My Line of Angry People,” but I’m guessing something is lost there. Any Chinese speakers here?
It’s something like: “I Know Women’s Minds/Hearts”
Gracias, topknot!
“In My Line of Angry People, topknot”..?
What women want is for guys to stop quoting The Simpsons.
I’m a woman and I don’t really want that! Is this right? Could it be possible that two women could maybe not want the same thing?
Even women don’t know what they want! How are us guys supposed to figure it out? Maybe I should say: I know what my wife wants. She wants me to stop quoting The Simpsons.
Unfortunately I saw the Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt “What Women Want” and it is very dumb (great analysis!) but at least the faces those two make during the whole movie are so cringe worthy and hilariously terrible it distracted me from the plot (there really wasn’t one).
“The reason I’m single is because I lack the perspective to empathize with others and I view the world from a place of confident cynicism. Some days you ironically see the bad movie and some days the movie ironically sees the bad you.”
I am also a single homosexual and I totally feel that sentence.
O/T: I really like your writing/posts so far!
I really like them, too. You read a bit like Augustin Burroughs, Gabe-of-the-Day. I hope you recognize the height of that compliment.
I was going to leave a comment saying the same thing! I chuckled throughout this whole thing, and I especially appreciated how you capitalized What Women Want throughout. Consistency! Definitely the only key to comedy.
The movie poster doesn’t really tell you much:
I love that this (very funny) review took a turn for the deep there at the end. Got my mind a-spinnin’, that’s for sure.
“Some days you ironically see the bad movie and some days the movie ironically sees the bad you.”
Wha? Dude, maybe it’s just my hangover talking, but you are HIRED.
Oh, man, I totally had a crush on Gong Li for most of the 90s.
Did you know “Red Sorghum” is not about gingivitis? And “Ju Dou” is not about making bagels.
I literally have seven more of these jokes, guys.
and did you know “Miami Vice” wasn’t about hardware tools?
i do like gong-li and andy lau though
the picture of you holding the Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 DVD is the greatest thing ever.
Can an old movie premise be considered a repayment on a sizable debt? If so, you’re welcome China!
“some days you ironically see the bad movie and some days the movie ironically sees the bad you”
That’s pretty amazing…
My apologies for copying the Not Actual Betty White