film Home > Movie Reviews

Chris Rock speaks so well. This is, of course, an allusion to one of his funnier stand-up bits about how all white people describe Colin Powell, but it's nevertheless true. For a guy best-known for being loud and abrasive--not to mention scarily accurate in his assessment of American racial dynamics--he is, in reality, soft-spoken, low-key, and self-conscious.

"I just hope the audience likes it," he says of his latest movie, I Think I Love My Wife, which, like 2003's decidedly not-good Head of State, he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. It's an adaptation of Eric Rohmer's 1972 French classic Chloe in the Afternoon and is about a married man (Rock) who begins to question his feelings for his wife (Gina Torres) when an old friend's ex (Kerry Washington) re-enters his life. "If it was up to me, I wouldn't tell anybody this was based on anything," Rock says. "There just seems to be something pretentious about that. Rohmer and all that. `Yeah right, Rock's doing Rohmer.' It sounds like a joke."

At least Rock isn't kidding himself about that, and doesn't shy away from laughing at himself during an interview at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons a few weeks ago. "It was a movie I kind of bumped into in the video store," he explains. "I watched it and called [writing partner Louis C.K.], and he watched it, and we both kind of thought it could be funny."

Could be funny. "You ever have that thing where you're in the passenger seat, and you're `pressing on a brake' even though you're [not driving]?" he asks. "That's kind of how I watch movies sometimes. Like, `Oh, that could've been funny. Oh man, that could've been really funny right there.' So I saw the original, and I saw at least five or six spots for big jokes right away and thought, Woo, I can do this."

Rock won't dare say the original didn't live up to its potential, though. It's already crazy enough imagining Chris Rock, a comedian who once joked about prisoners tossing each other's "salads" with jelly, being the lover of French cinema that he turns out to be. "No, the original is a masterpiece, but it's not a comedy," he insists before repeating, "It's a masterpiece, but it's a whole other movie. It's like a cover song. There's the Carpenters' `Superstar,' and there's Luther Vandross' `Superstar.' They're both hit songs and they have the same words, but they're totally different pieces of art."

I Think I Love My Wife, for example, is very American. It's crass at points, which is very Chris Rock. It's also surprisingly honest and poignant, which is also very Chris Rock. The tenderness he manages to evoke from many of his scenes is new, though.

"The movie is . . . not just about marriage," he explains. "It's about relationships, especially in America. In a country where you're not worried about food or shelter, you get bored with everything. Everything. When you first got this job [as a journalist], you loved it. You called up people and you bragged. Now you're like, `They're flying me where? Who? Chris Rock? Enh, OK.' `Who? Morgan Freeman? Enh.' You fall in and out of love with this job all the time, and that's what a relationship is. Anything that's supposed to last forever, you're going to fall in and out of it. It's just we get scared when it's love. `What's wrong?' Nothing's wrong. It's just normal."

Aside from his observations on the struggles of making a marriage work over the long term--a struggle he, of course, goes through himself as a married man with children--Rock couldn't help offering more insight into modern race relations in Wife, this time from the point of view of an upper-middle-class, affluent black family who are pretty much the only blacks in their neighborhood. They struggle to find other black kids for their own to play with and debate about the use of the N-word at home. The result is more subtle than we're used to from him--maybe because he opted to not draw attention to this struggle. It's just a part of his characters' lives, like it is his with his family.

"That's just who I am," he points out. "It's what I go through every day. It's weird, because this movie is probably more political than Head of State--in its own weird way. When I watch Lost in Translation, I go, `That's what it feels like to be black and middle class.' It's like being in a different country, like you don't belong to anything."

However, Rock balks when asked if his passion for a certain racial epithet would, in the wake of fellow comedian Michael Richards' onstage breakdown, cause him to excise the word from his movies and stand-up routines. After all, Al Sharpton and even Paul Mooney are arguing against it now, and New York did pass a symbolic resolution banning the use of the word.

"It's me," he says, confused. "What do you . . . ?" Truly, he is confused how anybody could think he, of all people, would surrender that word.

"It's me," Rock repeats. "[That's like saying,] `I can't believe James Brown was screaming.'"