Section B·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, December 12, 2000
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet
What Women Want has a running time of 127 minutes and a PG-13 rating, with adult situations.
There's nothing profound about the film, but it stays with you. After leaving the theater you'll find yourself turning an ear toward strangers and listening hard.
What Women Want works in a kind of circular way. It is an old-fashioned comedy about an old-fashioned man who gets hip by acting like a character out of an old-fashioned comedy.
Gibson shines in latest film
The Associated Press
Cary Grant would have gotten a kick out of What Women Want.
Among those benefiting from his sudden insight are Helen Hunt as a rival executive who got the job Gibson was after. Marisa Tomei as the coffee bar clerk she hunchedly flirts with and Ashley Johnson as his estranged teen-age daughter.
Or at least Mel Gibson's performance in it. Gibbon charms his way through this confident romantic comedy about a chauvinist stricken with the gift to read women's minds. Like Grant, he reveals a comic mind inside a leading man's body — and becomes all the more attractive for it.
With a swinging soundtrack of Frank Sinatra and other Rat Packish music, director Nancy Meyers sets a nice pace for Gibson.
what women Want is a well-timed film of doubletakes and pratfalls, mostly Gibson's. He's especially good when first bombarded on the streets of Chicago by the thoughts inside women's heads, looking as dismayed as if being pelted with popcorn.
Gibson stars as Nick Marshall, a Chicago advertising executive and unreconstructed cad who changes when he can hear what women think (they don't like him).
The plot's not very fresh — Gibson acquires supernatural powers after being electrocuted in his bathroom — but the makers of What Women Want get a lot of humor, and even a few tears, out of the one joke. And when the script comes up short, Gibson's there to carry the story along.
Crossword
ACROSS
1 Highland hat
4 Brief summary
9 French fries in
Liverpool
14 New Haven
student
15 Maine college
town
16 Extend a
subscription
17 Actor fly
"The Man Who
There"
18 Marine starter?
20 Regrets bitterly
22 Left briefly
24 Impromptu
26 Summer ermine
27 Vicinity
29 Drag
30 Extend across
30 Porker's quarters
34 Stick
38 Therefore
39 Take for granted
41 Loud and harsh
43 Emagination
44 Loafing
46 Understand
77 Tear
48 Fish eggs
49 Not this?
51 Dressing option
52 Loser
56 Cosmopolitan
persons
51 Shred
62 Mild oats
65 Poisonous plant
65 Lanka
66 Greek fabler
76 Take-out item?
78 Chill
79 Lively dances
70 Feel
71 Fa follower
DOWN
1 __ firma
2 For all to hear
3 Sappers
4 Propel a shell
5 Periods of note
6 Expenses
7 Mouseketeer
8 Funicello
© 2000 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
All rights reserved.
12/12/00
8 Combination of incongruous things
9 Vinegar bottle
10 Retained possession of
11 Division word
12 Lima's country
13 Stap at flies
14 Knight's title
15 Elaborate spectacle
16 Scales
17 Fleet commander
18 Min. part
19 Artificial limb
20 Chills and fever
21 Nuzzle
22 Petty dispute
23 False alternative?
24 Self-injudice pleasure-seekers
25 Posed
26 Exclamations of disgust
27 Reprimand at length
Solutions to Monday's crossword
50 Perform
51 Coarse files
52 Macho guy
54 Polo
55 Bay window
56 Char
57 Curved molding
58 Patient, to a doctor
59 Object of devotion
60 Back talk
64 Revolutionary Guevara
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