Richard Cooper (Chris Rock) and Brenda Cooper (Gina Torres, background) find their marriage tested in I Think I Love My Wife. (Phil Caruso/Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Like its middle-aged protagonist, I Think I Love My Wife is a film in the grips of an identity crisis. “What kind of movie am I?” it might ask a potential lover/distributor across a crowded café. “Am I a French New Wave intellectual ruminating on a married man’s fear of human freedom? Or am I a BET comedian who reduces mid-life crisis to something a little more Cedric the Entertainer: ‘I am bored out of my f—in’ mind?’ Qui suis-je?”
That, in a way, is the question that has dogged the movie career of Chris Rock, a superlative standup who has never managed to translate that Muppet-grinning, smartest-guy-in-the-room, good-man-in-a-bad-world persona to the screen. But Rock thinks outside the box, which is why he’s funny, and so it’s almost unsurprising that for his second directing effort (don’t think about Head of State; stop it. I said don’t. Fine. Don’t blame me if your day is ruined), he’s chosen to adapt the 1972 classic Chloe in the Afternoon, one of French director Eric Rohmer’s “moral tales.”
Rock plays Richard Cooper, an affluent dad who leaves his beautiful wife, Brenda (Gina Torres), and adorable kids every morning to take the train into Manhattan to work at a mighty white investment firm. For Richard, the commute is a soft porn fantasy montage of other women; see, what’s a guy to do when he’s not getting any at home, and his wife is wearing those biiiiiig panties? The film is littered with nasty Yuk Yuk’s throwaway jokes: “Before you get married, she calls you and says: ‘I can’t wait to give you a blow job!’ After you get married, she says: ‘I can’t wait to show you the new drapes!’” These groaners, soaked in the boring misogyny that’s the currency of bad standup, do serve one purpose: they definitely separate Rock from his likeable off-screen persona.
Furthering the divide is Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington), an old acquaintance who shows up at Richard’s office one day in a dress no bigger than a Post-it, a cigarette between her lips. Cue the horndog slow-mo! A string of afternoon meetings turn into a relationship that’s not quite sex, but it matters anyway, forcing Richard to address his sterile marriage.
The problem is that the illicit chat between the two, where Richard is supposed to be scouring the depths of his bothered heart, is lifted from Rohmer’s literary vision, and so the couple talk endlessly, but say almost nothing of wit or import; even the lust is muted. There is never any sense that anything is at stake, or that this sitcom won’t play out exactly as predicted.
And so, it’s almost jarring when the movie springs to life, as it does just often enough to be forgiven. The sharpest, most alert moments come from the casual observations of black middle-class life from the inside, which is where Rock thrives in his standup and in his TV show Everybody Hates Chris. Rock is great at opening up the race conversation, allowing that the black-white rift is more complicated, and potentially more bridgeable, than the dichotomy epitomized by The Simpsons’ satire of a bad comedian on BET: “Black guys drive a car like this: doo doo chhh ba doo doo. Yeah, but white guys, they just drive a car like this: Badiptdadoo badipta dipta doo!” The Coopers are black educated professionals on the white man’s turf, and how that feels informs almost everything. Richard: “Were there any black kids at the play date?” Brenda: “No. I might have to join a Mocha Mom’s group.”
Without this layer of meaning, I Think I Love My Wife would have been something entirely banal. Of course, Rock, who seems desperate not to be pigeonholed, is under no obligation to tackle race in his movies, but when the only other thing to look at resembles an extended episode of King of Queens, it’s a damn good thing he does.
I Think I Love My Wife opens March 16.
Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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