WHAT WOMEN WANT (WO ZHI NU REN XIN) (2011)

MyRating: YYY

Director: Chen Daming
Cast: Andy Lau, Gong Li, Yuan Li, Benny Chan, Li Chengru, Russell Wong

A Chinese remake of the American romantic comedy with the same title starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt in the year 2000. This movie marked the first ever collaboration between the two Chinese superstars, Andy Lau and Gong Li, who appeared as a dream pairing cast together.

Sun Zigang (Andy Lau) is a chauvinistic creative director of an advertising company in Beijing, who likes to be the center of attentions of women, an expert in seducing females with his sweet mouth and charming personality, and eventually brings them to bed. However, deep down inside he doesn't really understand how women feel and what they want. When his company hiring another creative director, a talented executive woman named Li Yilong (Gong Li), in order to aim and sell more to female market, Zigang feels threaten as he gets himself a real competitor.

Doesn't want to lose his superiority to a woman, Zigang knows he has to prove himself, as well as to make the new comer quit the company as soon as possible. But one weird accident changes everything, as he suddenly has the ability to listen to all the thoughts and self talks from all women. Feeling like a curse at the beginning, Zigang quickly learns how to use his new gift for his benefits, as now he can know women's opinions and desires from listening to their thoughts, including stealing the advertising campaign ideas from Yilong and makes them his own. From disliking each other at first, Zigang slowly falls for his rival as they come to know one another, and he realizes that what he has done is not respectable and fair to Yilong, that he may need to do something to change the situation.

This remake has almost all the same plots and story with the original, with only some small adjustments. As I watched it, the scene that I waited to see was how the accident happened, as that was also the scene I remember the most from the original movie, when Mel Gibson fell in the bathroom and got electrified. And when Andy Lau finally fell, hah... it's happening! But despite all the similarity, in which it was obvious that the writer did not feel the need to creatively change the story and plots, I still think it was a decent remake.

What made the movie worked the most was actually the two main stars, Andy Lau and Gong Li, who made perfect leads in this movie. They were the reason why I watched this movie at the first place. Andy Lau was charismatic and charming as always. He played his character well and his acting was fun to watch. While Gong Li was attractive and fine in her role as the executive woman. Together, these two veteran actors sparked the screen and made the movie worth watching, definitely not in a heavy tone, but in an enjoyable way. Overall, a good movie for me to have fun and romantic time, a bit overlong, but I was entertained. Andy Lau sang an English soundtrack titled "Slip Away", a nice song, where he sang the song in the stage for Gong Li in one romantic moment in the middle of the movie. He's always my favorite actor. (MJ)

Original Sound Track: "Slip Away" by Andy Lau.
(Open the song with right-click to stay in this page)