Film Review: What Men Want

"The Only Voices I Heard Were Joan Rivers And Tupac. And They Did Not Get Along..."

Acting as a wholly unnecessary and unwarranted "loose" remake of the Mel Gibson led What Women Want from 2000, Hairspray and Rock of Ages director, Adam Shankman, directs What Men Want, a terribly handled and woefully inept attempt at some form of comedy which sees Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures) take the lead role as Alison Davis, a successful sports agents who is left by the wayside after failing to be accepted for a work promotion in favour of her annoying, mostly white, big-headed colleagues. On the subsequent night out used to rid herself of her man-hating anger, she soon takes cues from Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty by being the subject of an accidental injury which after a swift overnight recovery, leaves her with the ability to read the mind of every male she comes into contact with. Whilst I'm all for trashy comedies which regardless of their overall quality actually manage to make me laugh in the ilk of Bad Moms, Shankman's latest is unsurprisingly a woefully inept, painfully unfunny two hours, one made worse with obvious notions of grandeur which attempt to tap into the #MeToo generation and ends up landing face down in a burning bit of awfulness as it crawls its' way to the credits and offers you salvation away from what is one of the worst remakes there is and ever will be. 

With a fundamental false step from the outset as the movie attempts to introduce Henson's supposedly charming, lead character, the fact that I nearly left the cinema after being in her company for only twenty minutes didn't exactly bode well heading forward. Whilst I appreciate a movie led by a female in a position of power, for some unknown and bizarre reason, Shankman's direction allows Henson to become a screaming, irritating black hole of annoyance in the ilk of Lucas Cruikshank in Fred: The Movie as she literally bellows her dialogue from the far reaches of her annoying mouth for pretty much the entirety of the film's opening act. As the movie moves more into the mystical aspect, the word cliche doesn't even cover it, and as we stumble through the inevitable hook-ups and notions of deception cooked up by Hanson's Davis, her character becomes even more despicable after she takes advantage of the one saving grace in the movie in the form of Aldis Hodge's (Hidden Figures) Will, a thoughtful, calmly spoken single father who for some reason finds Davis absolutely irresistible. Whilst I am aware that What Men Want doesn't exactly have myself in mind when it comes to the desired target audience, with (massive stereotype incoming) the film primarily designed for drunken female sleepovers and bachelor parties, such a point doesn't shy away from the fact that Shankman's movie was an utter drag from start to finish. Woeful. 

Overall Score: 3/10

Film Review: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

"This Is Bigger Than I Imagined..."

During the opening credits to Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, there was an uncanny moment of laughter from the audience when we made aware to the notion that not only was the latest Lee Child big-screen adaptation starring Tom Cruise, it was also specifically, "A Tom Cruise Production", immediately evoking thoughts of that sketch from Little Britain in which Dennis Waterman has the desire to write the theme tune, sing the theme tune etc, etc. Perhaps regarded as a Tom Cruise-driven money booster therefore, with director Edward Zwick perhaps being top choice to lead the project due to their involvement together with The Last Samurai, the latest Jack Reacher was in danger of becoming a complete turkey and yet, whilst it isn't exactly groundbreaking, Never Go Back is a passably fun, strictly 12A action thriller which passes the time nicely but does little to break out of its' minimal existence. 

In backing up the notion that Never Go Back is an undeniably and wildly strict 12A movie, kill-shots are edited away so quickly that for all the audience knows, Mr. Reacher may well have missed whilst one scene in particular comically shows one of the films' bad guys attempt to say a naughty word beginning with the letter F only to be buffered out so all we hear instead is a muffled "fuh". The editing and obvious cuts adhere to the now-favoured choice to gain the much wider appreciated 12A rating rather than a 15; a decision firmly based on economic reasons and whilst I'm rarely bothered by such trivial matters, Never Go Back suffers from being just another action flick, just with less Werner Herzog and more annoying sub-plots featuring 15 year old girls. To say the movie is both preposterous and predictable is an understatement but on-screen, the dynamic duo of Cruise and Cobie Smulders look like they are having enough fun to warrant its' short existence, even if it isn't quite the advocate for future Jack Reacher movies it might want to be. 

Overall Score: 6/10