Starring Andy Lau and Gong Li. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Rated G.

Did you accidentally see the brain-maiming romantic comedy The Bounty Hunter last year and you’ve only just now regained your will to live? Hold on to your meds and lock up your butter knives. What Women Want has come all the way from Beijing to replace Bounty Hunter as the new most desperately awful rom-com in the world ever. Come to think of it, that actually includes last year’s Killers, too, which means Ashton Kutcher is (temporarily) absolved and hell is a hockey rink.

Remember the original What Women Want, in which Mad Mel Gibson played a chauvinistic horndog ad executive who, after an unlikely bathroom accident (not that kind), could suddenly hear women’s thoughts, and high jinks and hilarity ensue? Well, writer-director Daming Chen obviously remembered the somewhat kookily amusing, glossy Hollywood flick from 11 years ago and wanted to make it again, but really, really poorly.

Did Chen have incriminating information about stars Andy Lau and Gong Li in order to get them to do this movie or did someone drug them? The beauteous Li is one of China’s most acclaimed actors for films such as Raise the Red Lantern and 2046. Lau memorably starred in House of Flying Daggers and Infernal Affairs. In What Women Want, both of them apparently forgot all that stuff.

What happens? Exactly what happens in the original, minus anything entertaining. Lau plays randy, sexist ad exec Sun Zi-Gang and Li plays company rival Li Yi-Long. Sun has a bathroom accident you wish was fatal, and, logically, he’s suddenly able to hear women’s thoughts. Unfunny things ensue.

Well, there is one funny bit: when Sun tries to hear his dimwit twin assistants’ thoughts, there isn’t a sound. Empty-headed silence is bliss.