What Men Want

Sports agent Ali Davis (Taraji P Henson) seems to have the world at her feet. With a career sparking the envy of all her male colleagues, life could not get any sweeter for the sassy businesswoman. But when one fateful day Ali fails to secure a well-deserved partnership at her firm due to her alleged inability to connect with men, the deflated entrepreneur visits a psychic (Erykah Badu) and pleads for help. Before she knows it, Ali is able to hear the inner thoughts of all the men in her life, from the personal to the professional, and as a result, decides to use her new-found power to try and sign a record-breaking contract with up-and-coming basketball superstar Jamal Barry (Shane Paul McGhie).

What Men Want, the premise reversal of Nancy Meyers’s American romantic fantasy comedy What Women Want, endeavours to further the visibility of women in the workplace and showcase that they too are just as capable at fulfilling managerial roles and foreseeing tough financial disputes as their male counterparts. Though comical at times – such as when Ali and her friends visit the psychic, their interaction in this scene being somewhat reminiscent of that between Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg in Jerry Zucker’s 1990 film, Ghost – the narrative remains predictable and dispersed throughout, with the storyline involving Jamal Barry’s rise to stardom taking more of a backseat so that Ali’s personal life and on-off relationship with Will (Aldis Hodge) can bear fruit.

Henson, along with Josh Brener, who plays sidekick and assistant Brandon Wallace, deliver plausible performances which maintain the film’s fun factor and keep it just that little bit alive, but other than that, What Men Want would not be the obvious choice for anyone looking to immerse themselves in an adventurous script that is brewing with originality.

Ghazaleh Golpira

What Men Want is released nationwide on 15^th March 2019.

Watch the trailer for What Men Want here: