As Pootie Tang meets the marital comedy of Louis C.K.'s HBO show, I Think I Love My Wife, turns out to be slightly funnier than it looks. Although Chris Rock delivers lines in his films the same way he does in stand-up, making his performances less than mediocre, he turns out to be a more than competent director. Unfortunately that is where praise for this conventional, formulaic, and proclaimed remake of Chloe in the Afternoon stops. Rock vents much of his hostility towards women, married women in particular, in an attempt to excuse male chauvinism and infidelity. It seems the only message Rocks wants to get across is that life ends once a man is married, and the only way to reinvigorate this pre-marital excitement is to find a younger, crazy, attractive women to obsess over you. Rock plays an investment banker living in suburbia, working in the city as he narrates all the downsides of being married and domesticated, like one of his old sketches on SNL.
Rock's second chance behind the camera finds him directing a script filled with some chuckles, but plagued with undeniably bitter misogyny. His direction does feel clumsy and misguided, especially in many of the higher budget crane shots and slow motion tracking shots. The rest of the movie is hovered by whether or not Rock will cheat on his wife, while progressively straying away from his comfortable life at home.
And all of this conflict, and soul searching stems from his wife's refusal to have sex. Why she won't have sex with him is all explained in a short montage of rejections for unexplained and ridiculous reasons, ("My head hurts.") Steve Buscemi manages to bring some flair to film, despite the lighter fair of material he has to work with. Ultimately Rock has shelled out a falsely inspired comedy that will surely please fans of the venerated comedian.
Rock's second chance behind the camera finds him directing a script filled with some chuckles, but plagued with undeniably bitter misogyny. His direction does feel clumsy and misguided, especially in many of the higher budget crane shots and slow motion tracking shots. The rest of the movie is hovered by whether or not Rock will cheat on his wife, while progressively straying away from his comfortable life at home.
And all of this conflict, and soul searching stems from his wife's refusal to have sex. Why she won't have sex with him is all explained in a short montage of rejections for unexplained and ridiculous reasons, ("My head hurts.") Steve Buscemi manages to bring some flair to film, despite the lighter fair of material he has to work with. Ultimately Rock has shelled out a falsely inspired comedy that will surely please fans of the venerated comedian.