I Think I Love My Wife: Critic Reviews

Rock has taken [Eric] Rohmer's marvelously probing, psychologically refined, exquisitely yakky, and deeply French movie and turned it into a coarse-talking, race-conscious, tonally challenged life-crisis comedy.

There are some raucous set pieces and a lot of frank, jokey talk about sex, but I Think I Love My Wife is not after crude or easy hilarity, and Mr. Rock works hard to hold his aggressive, irrepressible comic personality in check.

Very little that's clever, romantic or witty in this formulaic romp.

The movie is hilarious. ...There's [Rock's character's] encounter with Viagra, which I can't describe but has to be one of the funniest scenes of the decade and should easily push the movie over the $100 million mark by Week 3.

... if only the movie were as stinging as his stand-up.

Rock appears to have been inspired by the opportunity Chloe affords for unloading bitter chauvinism and venting hostility.

For each joke that is fresh, there are at least three that fall thuddingly flat.

I Think I Love My Wife slogs through drama and comedy as though both were a duty as onerous as a sexless marriage. Rarely do characters display anything approaching logic, unless their 180-degree turnarounds are part of a geometry proof.

The movie never breaks the surface of its characters or their situation. And Mr. Rock's paint-by-numbers approach as director only compounds the movie's flat, formulaic feel.

Directed and written by the talented comic, the movie suffers from the overblown notes of a punch-line-driven routine.

Rock finally provides hope he will develop into a genuine force on the big screen. The script is sharp and quick, and Rock's direction is sure-handed and occasionally inspired. He gives us a workday New York that feels real.

You can enjoy the cast in I Think I Love My Wife, but it's too bad they don't have more notes to play.

[Rock's] crowd-pleasing gags tend to clash with Rohmer's sly moral comedy.

Rock fails to develop the characters caught in their conjugal and singleton traps. As usual, his observational humor zings (and stings) -- but this is a movie, not stand-up.

Rock's defining comic characteristic is his no-nonsense honesty, tackling awkward issues head-on with bold, hostile, uproarious insights. Playing a milquetoast, he's tossed away his best weapon.

All good stuff. Rock delivers some laugh-out-loud lines, Washington is sexy and dangerous, Torres makes her character something more than a frigid harpy, and the workplace scenes are well-played.

I Think I Love My Wife is a surprisingly grown-up film. With only a minimum of gross-out humor - which may disappoint his fans - it gives us an adult take on relationships and a take the younger film audience may not be willing to hear.

Under director Rock, actor Rock doesn't possess quite the chops to pull off this character, and the humor and flights of fancy are simply too low-key for a movie that lists 'Irresistible Fantasy Woman No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3' in its credits.

Chris Rock, who famously mocked Jude Law's movie career at the Oscars, ought to watch out for his own after his second dud in a row as an actor-director, the screamingly unfunny romantic comedy I Think I Love My Wife.

Saddled with the weight of an unfocused, cliche-ridden script, a tiresome voice-over narration that drones on and on, and acting by Rock that's as wooden as Pinocchio, I Think I Love My Wife staggers in predictable circles for 94 long minutes.

Rock's version is funnier, blacker, hipper, and sexier, but Rohmer's shows a little more skin.

I Think I Love My Wife is first and foremost a sex comedy. But Rock is sharp enough to set it in a world where people of all races share the same dreams and desires -- if not the same real estate.

The most shocking thing about I Think I Love My Wife isn't the language, the sex, or the racial humor. It's the fact that it's not a funny movie. At all.

One of the best things about I Think I Love My Wife is that the film takes the time to develop the three principals beyond the stereotypes that underlie the characters.