How does the Chinese remake of What Women Want stack up to the original?

What Women desire was sort of a weird romantic comedy to begin with — Mel Gibson gains the power to “ hear ” women ’s thoughts , and his genial voyeurism somehow becomes romantic . But how does this story do when it ’s remade for Chinese audience a decade subsequently ? We watched the Chinese remaking , star Andy Lau and Gong Li , and here ’s what we thought of it .

Spoilers forward !

The original What Women Want was sort of a creepy-crawly film . Like You ’ve Got Mail , which number out a couple years ago , it ’s one of those films which is all about a man manipulating and beat a charwoman , in a way that ’s imagine to be loveable . And like You ’ve Got Mail , it essay to handle people ’s anxieties about the way the world is changing .

In the original , Mel Gibson is a sexist dickwad who works in advertising , and he ’s sort of a atavist to the Mad Men era . He ’s ill - equipped for a world where women are important as consumer , and he ’s thrown off his plot when Helen Hunt is lend in as his Modern hirer . But then , while testing out a box full of female consumer products that Hunt gives him , Gibson gets electrocuted — and on the spur of the moment he has brain - reading powers that only turn on women .

Gibson ’s awareness of what women are really opine make him a more sensitive person — but it also make him better at selling mother fucker to woman , and do him into the ultimate merchandising weenie . It also allows him to steal Hunt ’s idea , and undersell her until she finally loses her problem , at which point he repents and comes clean . As with many phantasy of this eccentric , the might fantasy and the redemption fantasy go hand in paw . Gibson learn to respect distaff power by gaining a new , fantastic power over women .

So now this film has been remade for Formosan interview — the unexampled translation , called Wo Zhi Nu Ren Xin or literallyI have a go at it a Woman ’s Heart , came out in China on Friday , and got a co-occurrent tone ending in many U.S. cities . ( Chances are if you hold out in a major city , it ’s showing near you , at least for the next few days . )

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How does it equate to Nancy Meyers ’ original translation ? In a nutshell , it ’s similar but more rambling and unfocussed . The introductory plot line is the same and the novel version keep on a lot of the same beats . But there are novel subplots that do n’t impart much to the story , and some subplots from the original get trounce . In short , it ’s not just U.S. studio apartment who make substandard remakes of extraneous motion picture — foreign studios are perfectly capable of cook inferior remake of U.S. films as well .

The biggest subplot added to the Taiwanese version involves the main character reference ’s forefather , who I do n’t remember was even a character in Meyers ’ rendering . The dad is obsessed with being an opera vocaliser or choral Isaac Merrit Singer , and he keeps insist he ’s a tenor when he ’s really a baritone , and driving everybody in the old folks home orchis with his tattle . Eventually , we find out that the old man was a terrible husband and Church Father who tortured his wife — which is offered as a sort of roundabout account for why the independent role , Sun Zigang , is such a jerking himself . The addition of the dad take a crap this more of a multi - generational saga , but it also allows us a means to analyze the main fictional character without actually post him to therapy .

And the other swelled subplot , which is really weirdly constructed , involves Gong Li ’s character . Just like Helen Hunt ’s version , she ’s a sassy unspecific who comes in and takes over at the advertising business firm . But in the reimagined Formosan variation , she drop a lot of clip coquet online with a occult likely boyfriend cognize only as 007 . He in conclusion fly up from Shanghai to visit her — and he turns out to be a head - hunter who want to recruit her to go work at an ad federal agency in Shanghai . It ’s kind of random , although his continuing presence in the cinema does serve to remind the audience that Gong ’s grapheme is still richly - power and sought after , even after she loses her job due to Andy Lau ’s machination .

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There are also some fresh sum up sequences that drag horribly , like a segment where all of the characters hoist up at a Japanese restaurant whose main specialty is Mongolian beef . Why is a Nipponese restaurant serving Mongol squawk ? We do n’t be intimate , but the type pass an extraordinarily farsighted time strain to unpack this mystery .

A couple of the more significant subplots from the U.S. version are sacrificed , meanwhile — Marisa Tomei ’s character is in there , but her function is drastically concentrate to a one- or two - joke character . And the running subplot about the girl who desire to kill herself is basically gone , except for a brief jokey moment — which mean that Andy Lau never has the same probability to certify straight sensitiveness and knowingness that Mel Gibson convey . Also , the shy , sack out girl who drops her papers is very much thrust to the sidelines here as well . Overall , the novel version of the film has fewer vivid distaff characters — woman have been sacrificed , this time around , to give screentime to Andy Lau ’s pappa and a brace of other male characters . It ’s curious , in a picture about a guy who gain a unexampled cognizance of women ’s subjectivity , to have so much vehemence put on male lineament who add almost nothing to the story .

And it ’s a lot less clear , this time around , what the mind - read guy actually learn from his sojourn to the female mindspace . A lot of the inner monologues that Andy Lau pick up on have to do with woman wanting men to buy them stuff , so to some extent he learns that he was right all along — women need robust man . Although , just like in the U.S. edition , Andy Lau does read to assess women ’s contributions — especially Gong Li ’s , when he ’s jump between just slip her ideas and actively collaborating with her . To the extent that the original plastic film had a baseline message that women ’s ideas are valuable , and woman ’s feel are important , this film preserve that .

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But of line , the ethnical context of use of the two films is very , very unlike . The American version is primarily about a gender shift at the turn of the millenary , with women becoming more powerful in the work . The Chinese version is subtly notice on the acclivity of consumer refinement in itself . And maybe that ’s why we have to see the father of Andy Lau ’s reference — we see a few voiced - centering flashbacks to his childhood , a few decennary earlier , when China was a much less thriving , much less urbanised country , and the idea of spending millions on advertising and seek to sell fancy stuff to charwoman would have been an foreign conception .

So to some extent , this rendering of What Women desire is n’t just about the acclivity of woman to big businessman — it ’s about the advance of China ’s middle class and upper course , a process which , in round , has created an US Army of distaff consumer . So this prison term around , what women need really is about consumerism and economical big businessman , and a parable about judgment - interpretation and advert might make more sense in that context than it did in the U.S. circa 2000 .

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