What Women Want (2011)

“I Know A Woman’s Heart” is a Chinese remake of the film “What Women Want” that came out in 2000 starring Helen Hunt and Mel Gibson. This time director Daming Chen tries his hand at this rom-com with Andy Lau & Gong Li instead of Hunt & Gibson.

Andy Lau has become a triple threat: he can act, he can dance and he can sing and that gets him the nod for the Wow-Factor. Here he becomes Sun Zi Gang, a male chauvinist who doesn’t necessarily look down on women but rather seems to have figured them out quite easily a long time ago. His method? A smile and a compliment. Or a lie and a smile, which ever works best. The only problem for Sun is when they come back… then he calls in his man Tip to gently ease them out of the way. Sun is a big-shot exec in a bigger company, so you could say that everything is going according to plan…

Gong Li transforms herself into Li Yi-Long, the shy but snarky bookworm just begging to be picked out by the ever-so-smooth Sun. She gets hired by the same company that employs Sun and sort of hijacks his mojo. From there, butting heads is a certainty. Then one day during a presentation, Li asks everybody to take home a box of female goodies, try them and report on them the next day. A little hocus-pocus later and Sun can now understand women’s thoughts when he enters their vicinity.

The overall aesthetics of the film are pleasing to the eye but that shouldn’t suggest that underneath all that glitz and glamour lies something thought-provoking or even remotely in touch with reality. The vast majority of people won’t come in to work Monday morning sporting a 1000$ watch only to find 20 jaw-dropping babes working in the office. I’m just saying: the movie has kept it’s Hollywoodesque façade and it seems disingenuous from the get-go, so to speak. You need a serious reality check when you walk into your private office and you’re greeted by two Chinese twins talking in unison. Come on… really?

Champagne and wine flows, luxury is a given and two of Asia’s sex symbols meet in a romantic comedy that can only be described as average. The premise of “being able to hear women’s thoughts and use it to your advantage” is a satisfying one but it only drives the movie so far. Then you have to fall back on Lau and Li’s performances which I don’t think is enough. Somehow, they just don’t mesh together well enough to make me believe in their romantic spark.

If you have a girlfriend you would like to watch a movie with, then this is an obvious choice. The typical “rich/sexy” man learns his lesson and the “I’m-a-woman-living-in-a-Man’s-world” gets what she secretly yearns for. But if you’re just wondering what to watch next Saturday then I’d say skip “I Know A Woman’s Heart”. Unless the rom-com genre is at the top of your list.

What Women Want (2011) , 7.6 out of 10 based on 5 ratings