What Women Want

What Women Want is a 2000 American romantic comedy film, written by Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa and Diane Drake, directed by Nancy Meyers, and starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. The film was a box office success with a North American domestic gross of US$182,811,707 and a worldwide gross of $374,111,707, against a budget of $70 million.

Plot

Nick Marshall, a Chicago advertising executive and alpha male, who grew up with his Las Vegas showgirl mother, is a chauvinist. He is skilled at selling to men and seducing women, including local coffee attendant Lola. Just as he thinks he's headed for a promotion, his manager, Dan, informs him that he is hiring Darcy McGuire instead, to broaden the firm's appeal to women.

Also, his estranged 15-year-old daughter Alexis Thomes is spending two weeks with him while his ex-wife Gigi goes on her honeymoon with her new husband. Alexis is embarrassed by Nick, and resents his being protective when he meets her boyfriend.

Needing to prove himself to Darcy and Dan, Nick attempts to think of copy for a series of feminine products that Darcy distributed at the day's staff meeting. Whilst singing to Meredith Brooks, he slips and falls into his bathtub while holding an electric hairdryer, shocking himself. The next day, Nick wakes up able to understand his maid's thoughts as she cleans his apartment. As he walks through a park and encounters numerous women, he realizes that he can hear their thoughts, even those of a female poodle. This proves to be an epiphany for him when he hears the thoughts of his female co-workers (some of whom have slept with him and regretted it). When he goes to a previous therapist, Dr. Perkins (who also disliked him), she realizes his gift: "If Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, and you can speak Venutian, the world can be yours."

Mel Gibson

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson AO (born January 3, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker (screenwriter, producer and director). He is most well known as an action hero, for roles such as Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon buddy cop film series and Max Rockatansky in the first three films in the Mad Max post-apocalyptic action series.

He was born in Peekskill, New York, and moved with his parents to Sydney when he was 12 years old. He studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art. During the 1980s, Gibson founded Icon Entertainment, a production company which independent film director Atom Egoyan has called, "an alternative to the studio system." Director Peter Weir cast Gibson as one of the leads in the critically acclaimed World War I drama Gallipoli (1981), which earned Gibson a Best Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute. The film also helped to earn Gibson the reputation of a serious, versatile actor.

In 1995, Gibson produced, directed, and starred in the epic historical drama film Braveheart, for which he won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Director, along with the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2004, he directed and produced the financially successful, but controversial, biblical drama film The Passion of the Christ. Gibson received further critical notice for his directorial work of the 2006 action-adventure film Apocalypto, which is set in Mesoamerica during the early 16th century.

Marisa Tomei

Marisa Tomei (/məˈrɪsə toʊˈmeɪ/; Italian pronunciation: [maˈriːza toˈmɛi]; born December 4, 1964) is an American actress. In a career spanning three decades, Tomei had initial success in films as a young actress, followed by a series of unsuccessful films, then a resurgence with a series of critically acclaimed films. Following her work on the television series As the World Turns, she came to prominence as a cast member on The Cosby Show spin-off A Different World in 1987. After having minor roles in a few films, she came to international attention in 1992 with the comedy My Cousin Vinny, for which she received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Of the many films in which Tomei has appeared, her most commercially successful ones to date are What Women Want (2000), Anger Management (2003), Wild Hogs (2007), and Parental Guidance (2012), all of which have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. She received critical acclaim for her performances in films such as Untamed Heart (1993), The Paper (1994), Unhook the Stars (1996), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), In the Bedroom (2001) (for which she received her second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), The Wrestler (2008) (for which she received her third Academy Award nomination), Cyrus (2010), and Love Is Strange (2014).