Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt are receiving high marks from most critics for What Women Want, even while the film itself is being dismissed by many of them as "predictable" and "trite."
Robert Denerstein, writing for the Scripps Howard News Service observes: "The early comic scenes are so broadly conceived you may not believe that a palatable (and even pleasurable) movie waits in the wings. That movie arrives with Hunt, who has never brought this much glamor to a big-screen role."
Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News bestows this praise on Gibson: "If, as the adage goes, 'dying is easy, comedy is hard,' then Gibson has pulled off a career-altering feat with this movie."
Summing up, Joe Morgenstern writes in today's Wall Street Journal: "What Women Want ... is a case of a gimmicky premise gone right."
And Eleanor Ringel Gillespie concludes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "If you're in the mood for some well-done fluff - with some deft performances and bright dialogue - you could do a lot worse."
Several reviewers, incidentally, observe that the Mel Gibson role resembles many of those played by Cary Grant a half century ago. Indeed, Jami Bernard in the New York Daily News comments: "It's a movie that also answers the question: What do action stars want when they get too old to be taken seriously as lethal weapons? The answer is: They want to be Cary Grant, and Gibson, as he demonstrates here, has a shot at it."
