What Women Want – 2 Stars (Average)

What Women Want is a romantic comedy light enough to float away.

See What Women Want for entertainment only and do not be fooled by its story line, which has Mel Gibson (Nick) as a chauvinistic advertising executive who after an accident can suddenly hear what women are really thinking.

Gibson is paired with Helen Hunt (Darcy) who gets the promotion that Nick (Mel Gibson) covets. Darcy is more talented and Nick fancies himself as a ladies man, not a good combination for Nick, who plans to use his newfound talent to sabotage Darcy by stealing her ideas and claiming them as his own. Nick, of course, does not succeed as love gets in his way.

The director of this film is Nancy Meyers who was also the writer/director for Something's Gotta Give. The writing in What Women Want by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa is no better than what Nancy Meyers penned in Something's Gotta Give, so the film effort remains average at best despite its entertainment value.

Hunt is a real talent with real hardware and seemed so on top of her game after the release of What Women Want in 2000.

When she left the Mad About You sitcom opposite screen partner Paul Reiser she had earned 4 consecutive Emmy Awards (1996 through 1999) and became the highest paid TV actress in history, earning $1 million per episode.

Hunt is the only actress to win a Golden Globe Award (she has 4), an Academy Award (Best Actress in As Good as It Gets) and an Emmy Award in the same year (1998). Hunt is also the only actress to win 4 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.

Heck, I figured, move over Julia Roberts and hello Helen Hunt as America's newest sweetheart, but Hunt did Cast Away with Tom Hanks and then returned to Broadway. Big screen's loss became Broadway's gain. I believe that the two rising stars today are Reese Witherspoon and Hilary Swank.

Witherspoon won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line opposite Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. She won 10 other Best Actress awards for the same performance. I knew Reese Witherspoon was the real deal and on the rise when I saw her in Sweet Home Alabama three years earlier.

Swank's presence on the star scene has become enormous. She took a huge chance in Boys Don't Cry (a great performance in a crummy movie) in 1999 and won a Best Actress Oscar, and then picked up another Best Actress Oscar in 2004 for Million Dollar Baby (another difficult role, this time as a female boxer) in Director Clint Eastwood's Oscar winning film.

Both of these young actresses (Witherspoon at 30 and Swank at 32) have become bankable with a capital B. If you ignore their relationship problems, life is good when you are the center of attention and making it big time.

After all, this is the acting profession, where the stars can switch partners faster than cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses.