Director: Nancy Meyers
Starring: Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei, Lauren Holly, Bette Midler, Alan Alda, Mark Feuerstein, Valerie Perrine

- Reviewed by Kerri

The premise of this movie is silly, but if it's silly you're after, this is a good movie. Mel Gibson reminds us why Hollywood fell in love with him as he hams it up on screen as Nick, a chauvinistic ad executive with a flair for creating sexist advertisements for liquor, cigarettes, and other manly things. 

The movie starts off with his ex-wife Gigi (Lauren Holly) telling her girlfriends what an ass he is when it comes to women, and setting the background for how he came to be this way. Nick thinks he's going to get a promotion but is surprised when his boss (Alan Alda) chooses a rival creative director to fill the job—enter Darcy (Helen Hunt) who is going to whip the ad agency into shape and give it some lessons in the female side of things.

Darcy's first introductions include a pink box of "woman things" and instructions to Nick to come up with something by the next morning. Nick balks, but after two bottles of wine, decides to try to think like a woman. What follows is a hilarious segment of him waxing his legs, trying on pantyhose and mascara, etc. He slips on some bath beads, falls into the tub with a hair dryer, and the next thing he knows, he wakes up the next morning able to hear women's thoughts. This of course, makes him crazy, until his counselor (Bette Midler) tells him he's got the world on a string and can turn this to his own advantage. Nick then plots to take Darcy's job away and proceeds to sabotage her work.

Aha, but life is never that simple. We watch Nick as he tries to understand the female mind, at the same time learning that he didn't understand anything about women. He of course falls in love with Darcy at the same time he is undermining her work. He "listens" to his 15-year-old daughter and learns that he isn't a good father. A very sweet sideline to the movie is the part of the office mouse, teetering on thoughts of suicide, that Nick notices for the first time. An unnecessary part of the movie is the coffee girl (Marisa Tomei) whom he goes out with; I thought that added nothing to the script.

There were definitely some funny lines, and a great sequence of Nick dancing to Frank Sinatra; the ending was kinda hokey but in all, the movie was pretty well put together. It wasn't dripping in artsyness but it had some deep moments and it was great fun, very funny, and worth full price.

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