4 / 10
What Men Want is the gender-flipped remake of the 2000 Mel Gibson romantic comedy What Women Want. Adam Shankman directed. Tina Gordon, Peter Huyck, and Alex Gregory wrote. Taraji P. Henson plays Ali Davis, a sports agent at a major Atlanta agency. After drinking strange tea at a bachelorette party, she acquires the ability to hear men’s thoughts. She uses this ability to land a major NBA prospect as a client and to handle her workplace politics. Aldis Hodge plays Will, a bartender love interest. Tracy Morgan plays Joe “Dolla” Barry, the prospect’s father. Erykah Badu plays Sister, the psychic. The plot inverts the 2000 original while keeping most structural beats.
The film made approximately seventy-three million dollars worldwide on a twenty million dollar budget. The commercial performance was modest. The reviews were mixed. The film succeeds in some areas where the 2000 original failed and fails in some areas where the 2000 original succeeded. The gender flip is the production’s central commitment. The flip works in some sequences and exposes its limitations in others.
What Made It a Woke Disaster
The 2000 What Women Want gave Mel Gibson access to women’s thoughts. The film mined comedy from a man discovering that women have inner lives more complex than the men around them recognized. The framing was that the gift forced Gibson to confront his own assumptions and become a better man. The structural argument was that men should listen to women. The 2000 film used its premise to make that argument.
The 2019 inversion gives Taraji P. Henson access to men’s thoughts. The framing is that the gift confirms what the protagonist already suspected. Men are mostly thinking about sex, money, food, and dismissive things about the women around them. The film does not use the premise to suggest the protagonist learns anything about men. The film uses the premise to validate the protagonist’s existing position. Men are obstacles or distractions. The mind-reading is not a journey of understanding. It is a tactical advantage in a hostile environment.
The film’s male characters are uniformly drawn as inadequate. Ali’s father is a tough-love disappointment. Her assistant Brandon (Josh Brener) is a wormy comic relief whose stupidity is the joke. The senior agents at her firm are sexist obstacles to her promotion. The NBA prospect Jamal (Shane Paul McGhie) is a passive talent whose father runs his life. Will, the love interest, is the one functional adult male in the film, and the script struggles to give him agency beyond reacting to Ali’s choices. The film’s worldview is that men in Ali’s professional world are not worth understanding. They are worth manipulating.
For Writers
Gender flips that invert a premise without inverting its structure produce films that demonstrate worldview rather than develop character. What Men Want has the same plot beats as What Women Want with the gendered conclusions inverted. The 2000 film argued men should listen. The 2019 film argues women should not have to. The lesson is that premise inversions require structural reconsideration. If you flip who hears the thoughts but leave the rest of the script identical, you produce a film whose conclusions read as inverted assumptions rather than as earned discoveries.
The Wasted Premise
The film’s premise is one of the more interesting comedic setups available in the 2010s. A woman in male-dominated professional sports gets the ability to read men’s minds. The comedy possibilities are enormous. The locker room politics of NBA prospect signing. The boardroom dynamics of a male-dominated agency. The dating-life implications of always knowing what the man is thinking. The script gestures at all three and develops none of them.
The Aladna-style strangeness the premise could have generated is missing. The film mostly uses the mind-reading as a plot device for advancing Ali toward her promotion. The fundamental comedic discovery (what do men actually think about?) is left unexplored. The film assumes the audience already knows what men think about and the gift is mostly a tool for handling a world where what men think about is the problem. The premise’s actual comedic territory goes unexplored.
For Writers
A high-concept premise that the script uses as plot mechanic rather than as comedic exploration wastes its central asset. What Men Want has Taraji P. Henson reading men’s minds without ever using the device for genuine discovery. The lesson is that high-concept premises are gifts. They generate scenes other scripts cannot generate. If your script uses the gift only for plot advancement, you have built a film that does not need its own premise. Lean into the gift. Let the comedy come from the discovery the premise enables.
Tracy Morgan
Tracy Morgan’s Joe “Dolla” Barry is the film’s strongest individual performance. Morgan plays the character as a former athlete who is now trying to manage his son’s career while also enjoying the lifestyle his son’s potential earnings will provide. The performance has texture. The character has specific contradictions. Morgan is doing the most committed character work in the film and the film around him does not consistently match his energy.
The Morgan performance also points at what the film could have been. A film built around the Joe-Jamal father-son dynamic, with Ali’s mind-reading as the device that lets her understand and exploit the relationship, would have been a stronger comedy than the workplace-politics version the film actually produces. The Morgan performance is the production’s clearest signal that the script had material it did not commit to.
For Writers
A supporting performance that points at a stronger version of the film signals the script chose the wrong story. Tracy Morgan’s work in What Men Want suggests a father-son comedy the script never wrote. The lesson is that strong individual character work can reveal what the script’s other choices should have been. Pay attention. If your best supporting performance is in a subplot, the subplot might be the actual film.
Craft Note
The poker game sequence is the film’s most successful comedic passage. Ali sits at an underground card game with NBA prospects and their handlers. The mind-reading lets her play with perfect information against men who do not know she has the gift. The sequence stages comedy through specific reaction shots and committed performance work from Taraji P. Henson. The scene runs about seven minutes and is the film’s clearest demonstration of what the premise could deliver consistently. The rest of the film does not match the poker game’s confidence with the high-concept material.
The Verdict
4/10. A gender-flipped remake that does not use its premise as fully as it could have. Tracy Morgan and the poker game sequence are the film’s clearest strengths. The framing of men as obstacles or fools limits what the comedy can do. The 2000 What Women Want or other Taraji P. Henson dramatic work are better uses of viewing time.
FAQ
How does it compare to What Women Want?
Similar structure with different demographics. The 2000 version is more entertaining despite being less ambitious.
Is Taraji P. Henson good?
The performance is committed. The script does not always use her strengths. Her dramatic work in other films is generally stronger.
How is Tracy Morgan?
The strongest individual supporting performance. Morgan plays Joe Barry with specific commitment to the character’s underlying ambition and affection for his son.
Is the sports world depicted accurately?
Approximately. The film uses real NBA players in cameo appearances. The agency culture is simplified for comedy.
Did the gender flip work?
The flip happened. The comedy that should have emerged from the flip largely did not.
Who is Adam Shankman?
American director. Hairspray (2007), Bringing Down the House (2003), Rock of Ages (2012). Specializes in mainstream comedy.
Should I watch this?
For the poker sequence and Tracy Morgan, yes. As a complete film, lower priority.