I Think I Love My Wife reviewed by Samuel Osborn
Chris Rock is an abrasive guy; his voice especially. When he gets all worked up, his eyes wide, toothy smile yanked up into his cheeks, his voice sounds like a poodle's bark put through a cheese grater. Rock's comic timing has more to do with decibel levels than it does with pauses. So fancy my surprise when I learned that his next project would put him in the role of Richard Cooper: upper-middle class father, husband, and all-around suburbanite; the type of guy who's embarrassed to raise his voice in public. And with him also in the director's chair, adapting what's known to be a respectable French drama (Chloe in the Afternoon), I Think I Love My Wife could be a serious turning point in Chris Rock's career. The final product, however, doesn't manage to make that turn. In fact, it'd be more appropriate for Mr. Rock to re-title his film from I Think I Love My Wife to I Think I Overestimated Myself.
The film takes on the dilemma of fidelity in a bored, routine marriage. Mr. Rock manages to distill the dilemma down to a question of sex, asking "If I'm not getting sex at home, why can't I get sex elsewhere?" His wife, Brenda (Gina Torres), is a modern black mother, working as a teacher, a wife, and a mom in a Westchester neighborhood populated by white people. Rock has toned down the race-card bits here, trading in shock factor for some smart comments on the assimilation of black and white cultures.
His character, Richard Cooper, is wealthy and typically successful, constantly narrating with the sort of internal monologue Mr. Rock brought to his semi-autobiographical TV show, "Everybody Hates Chris." His thoughts wander mostly to the Manhattan women he passes by on the train to work, Rock's camera creeping always closer to the more tasty bits of the female physique. The whole of his imagination culminates into his old high school friend, Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington), dressed to kill and leaning seductively onto his office desk one afternoon. She visits unannounced, in town looking for a job recommendation from Richard. They meet for lunch and hit it off like back in the day. He's married and known to be safe and she's the party girl from high school that forgot to grow up. The meetings continue in secret, raising questions at home from Brenda and raising eyebrows from secretaries at Richard's office. The dilemma eventually mounts to the sexual caliber, where the real drama settles in.
For a product built from scratch by Chris Rock, ironically working as a pure film auteur here (a term used mostly for, ahm, good directors), I Think I Love My Wife is fairly innocuous. It probably could have even eeked out a PG-13 rating if Rock didn't have such a fascination with the F-word. And he does well by the narration, sometimes bringing an insightful honesty to the married man's dilemma and the middle-aged tragedy.
The problem lies sadly in his own performance. He isn't a good actor. His directing feels amateurish, with bizarre camera choices and a crappy comic timing that decapitates most of the jokes. The writing, paired this time with Louis C.K. ("Lucky Louie," the HBO series), deals clumsily with dialogue and stretches and scrunches up the story into an awkward timeline (for instance, it's unclear whether the last half hour is an act or an epilogue). And, the main problem, his wife character, Brenda, is so boring, so nagging and so motherly that we don't ever find the sympathy to root for her. I wanted Richard to leave her and, I'll admit, I rooted more for Nikki. We're supposed to feel sympathy for the neglected wife in this sort of film. We're supposed to come to despise the morally strained husband and love each of the women equally. That way it's a moral dilemma for both the husband and the audience. Match Point conducted this dilemma masterfully. Each member of Woody Allen's audience reacted differently to the dilemma, depending on morals of their own. Rock's picture is lopsided in this way, and it comes together like a tolerable song on the radio: just catchy enough to not turn off.
Samuel Osborn
Chris Rock is an abrasive guy; his voice especially. When he gets all worked up, his eyes wide, toothy smile yanked up into his cheeks, his voice sounds like a poodle's bark put through a cheese grater. Rock's comic timing has more to do with decibel levels than it does with pauses. So fancy my surprise when I learned that his next project would put him in the role of Richard Cooper: upper-middle class father, husband, and all-around suburbanite; the type of guy who's embarrassed to raise his voice in public. And with him also in the director's chair, adapting what's known to be a respectable French drama (Chloe in the Afternoon), I Think I Love My Wife could be a serious turning point in Chris Rock's career. The final product, however, doesn't manage to make that turn. In fact, it'd be more appropriate for Mr. Rock to re-title his film from I Think I Love My Wife to I Think I Overestimated Myself.
The film takes on the dilemma of fidelity in a bored, routine marriage. Mr. Rock manages to distill the dilemma down to a question of sex, asking "If I'm not getting sex at home, why can't I get sex elsewhere?" His wife, Brenda (Gina Torres), is a modern black mother, working as a teacher, a wife, and a mom in a Westchester neighborhood populated by white people. Rock has toned down the race-card bits here, trading in shock factor for some smart comments on the assimilation of black and white cultures.
His character, Richard Cooper, is wealthy and typically successful, constantly narrating with the sort of internal monologue Mr. Rock brought to his semi-autobiographical TV show, "Everybody Hates Chris." His thoughts wander mostly to the Manhattan women he passes by on the train to work, Rock's camera creeping always closer to the more tasty bits of the female physique. The whole of his imagination culminates into his old high school friend, Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington), dressed to kill and leaning seductively onto his office desk one afternoon. She visits unannounced, in town looking for a job recommendation from Richard. They meet for lunch and hit it off like back in the day. He's married and known to be safe and she's the party girl from high school that forgot to grow up. The meetings continue in secret, raising questions at home from Brenda and raising eyebrows from secretaries at Richard's office. The dilemma eventually mounts to the sexual caliber, where the real drama settles in.
For a product built from scratch by Chris Rock, ironically working as a pure film auteur here (a term used mostly for, ahm, good directors), I Think I Love My Wife is fairly innocuous. It probably could have even eeked out a PG-13 rating if Rock didn't have such a fascination with the F-word. And he does well by the narration, sometimes bringing an insightful honesty to the married man's dilemma and the middle-aged tragedy.
The problem lies sadly in his own performance. He isn't a good actor. His directing feels amateurish, with bizarre camera choices and a crappy comic timing that decapitates most of the jokes. The writing, paired this time with Louis C.K. ("Lucky Louie," the HBO series), deals clumsily with dialogue and stretches and scrunches up the story into an awkward timeline (for instance, it's unclear whether the last half hour is an act or an epilogue). And, the main problem, his wife character, Brenda, is so boring, so nagging and so motherly that we don't ever find the sympathy to root for her. I wanted Richard to leave her and, I'll admit, I rooted more for Nikki. We're supposed to feel sympathy for the neglected wife in this sort of film. We're supposed to come to despise the morally strained husband and love each of the women equally. That way it's a moral dilemma for both the husband and the audience. Match Point conducted this dilemma masterfully. Each member of Woody Allen's audience reacted differently to the dilemma, depending on morals of their own. Rock's picture is lopsided in this way, and it comes together like a tolerable song on the radio: just catchy enough to not turn off.
Samuel Osborn