For the most part, Netflix originals tend to be the ones that seize hold of the streaming service’s number one spot and refuse to let go until the next one comes along, but the unexpected success of What Men Want has seen the status fall to the loose remake of a rom-com that had already been remade twice over.
Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt headlined the 2000 original from genre savant Nancy Meyers, with the leading man netting a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in the Musical or Comedy category for his troubles, with What Women Want overcoming middling reviews to haul in almost $375 million at the box office.
In 2004, Indian do-over Aga Bai Arrecha!, and seven years after that Andy Lau and Gong Li took center stage in the Chinese version, before it was decided that what the world really needed was a fourth spin on the same story. To be fair, director Adam Shankman did flip the switch by having Taraji P. Henson’s protagonist as the one to discover the ability to read the minds of the opposite sex, but respective Rotten Tomatoes score of 42 and 40 percent from critics and audiences – as well as a theatrical run that yielded $300 million less than its Hollywood forebear – indicated that familiarity was starting to breed contempt.
And yet, FlixPatrol has revealed that What Men Want has leapfrogged the competition to become Netflix’s most-watched feature on a worldwide scale, a development that would have seemed ludicrous had you suggested it as recently as the start of the week. Let’s hope the boardroom doesn’t get any ideas, though, because the last thing we need is a fifth film boasting an identical premise.
