Flawed Rock

I Think I Love My Wife

(R)

originally published March 21, 2007

What happened to Chris Rock? Arguably (but I’m not willing to argue this point for very long) the greatest stand-up comic of his generation, Rock strung together a series of riotously funny, socially brilliant, caustically acerbic HBO specials, “Bring the Pain” and “Bigger and Blacker,” in the '90s. His rants on race, sex, relationships and politics were groundbreaking even in our post-Richard Pryor world, and Rock ably filled the void left by Eddie Murphy’s ascent into the box office stratosphere. (Can you even imagine the massively egotistical Murphy doing stand up now? "Delirious" seems like it’s millennia, not a quarter of a century, old.)

Then, like Murphy, Rock found superstardom or at least a fraction of it. A slew of supporting parts in the painfully funny ( Dogma , Nurse Betty ), the painfully overextended ( Lethal Weapon 4 ), and the just plain painful ( Sgt. Bilko , Beverly Hills Ninja, Doctor Dolittle ) followed. Now Rock’s a star, able to focus on honing his greatest gift - a razor-sharp understanding of the affairs between men and women, whites and blacks, rich and poor - but he’s done nothing of the sort. His last HBO special, “Never Scared,” was tired and spottily humorous at best, possibly because he was spending too much time writing and starring in Down to Earth , the Weitz Brothers’ill-conceived remake of the Warren Beatty vehicle Heaven Can Wait (itself a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan ), and writing, directing and starring in Head of State , quite possibly the most disappointing political comedy I’ve ever had the misfortune to anticipate. Rock’s trademark trenchancy (his rant on the unfeasibility of a black vice-president was a highlight of “Bigger and Blacker”) was replaced by easy, juvenile jokes more appropriate (and funnier) in Friday . The closest he came to true political satire on the level of Bulworth (an underrated Beatty gem) or Wag the Dog (David Mamet, Barry Levinson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro,and Willie Nelson at their finest) was the mass exodus of white Californians rushing out to vote when they heard Rock’s Mays Gilliam was winning the presidential election.

Now back to my opening query. What did happen to Chris Rock? He’s an obviously talented comedian and a decidedly smart man with an eye for life’s little details as sharp as Jerry Seinfeld’s and as edgy as Richard Pryor’s. The fault with Rock may lie less within himself and more with the medium he has chosen. Where did Seinfeld get his groove back? He got it on television. Why? He’s not a very good actor, and neither is Rock. His eyes give him away throughout his new feature, I Think I Love My Wife . No matter what emotion he is meant to be conveying to hardworking wife Brenda (Gina Torres, Serenity ), his eyes betray a mirthful, mischievous, “I’m just acting” gleam much like Seinfeld’s ever-present smirk. Murphy is a movie star - has been ever since the massively popular and entertaining Beverly Hills Cop - and an actor (petulant reaction or not, Murphy deserved this year’s Academy Award). The same accusation can be made of Pryor, a one-of-a-kind comedic virtuoso. Rock may be a better stand-up comic than Murphy and rank just behind Pryor, but he will never be an actor nor a writer nor a director. He’s tried again and again and displays little improvement in I Think I Love My Wife . Considering the small-screen success of “Everybody Hates Chris” and his first two HBO specials, Rock should rethink his present career path.

Rock’s big screen failings provide all the necessary reasons to tut-tut his decision to remake French filmmaker Eric Rohmer’s Chloe in the Afternoon , the last of his Six Moral Tales, as a misogynistic, Woody Allenesque drama of comedic proportions. In I Think I Love My Wife , Rock plays Richard Cooper, an investment banker bored with his wife. When the gorgeous, sexy, literally smoking Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington, The Last King of Scotland ) begins dropping by Richard’s office for daily lunches, he starts a sexless affair that will force him to choose what he really wants from his life, the exciting unpredictability of a Nikki or the safety of Brenda. Rock the writer shows a smidgen of maturity with I Think I Love My Wife , but he still relies on pitiful racial commentary that pales next to his stand-up. Unlike his idol, Allen, who elevated Jewish jokes to a socially skewering art form, Rock conjures up musty depictions of African-Americans as incapable of monogamy. As a director, he shows a visual restraint missing from his first effort. Still, unlike Kevin Smith, a notorious underdirector who lets his juvenilely mature, ear-burningly profane, brilliantly pop cultural, blisteringly funny words do the talking, Rock fails to develop a script that can make up for the lack of an interesting visual dimension. (The Spike Lee-inspired floating breakdown appears out-of-place in Rock’s drab film.) He spends far too much time on dated pop zingers about Prince and Michael Jackson; repetition of an unfunny gag regarding elevator profanity; and a horridly cliché

d Viagra mishap. So excited to have an R-rating, Rock over-deploys the f-bombs. His distastefully foul-mouthed characters need to wash their mouths out with soap. Maybe then they could deal with their marital issues like adults and start having sex again. Rock may think he loves his wife, but I know I don’t like his film.

Drew Wheeler