| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
As uneven as I Think I Love My Wife often is, it still has an emotional resonance lacking in most films about relationships. By dealing with temptation in even a quasi-realistic way, it affirms that, like comedy, monogamy is hard.
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| 75 |
ReelViews
What is missing in depth and philosophical intent is compensated for with humor and humanization.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
The movie is hilarious...there's Rock's encounter with Viagra, which I can't describe but has to be one of the funniest scenes of the decade.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
Mr. Rock has not only done his best work as a director and screenwriter but has also made an unusually insightful and funny mainstream American movie about the predicaments of modern marriage.
|
| 67 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Though hampered at times by Rock's limitations as an actor and a director, I Think I Love My Wife stays faithful to the spirit of Rohmer's original, grappling honestly with the uncertainties of settling down and the temptations that lurk outside even the most stable marriages.
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| 63 |
New York Daily News
For each joke that is fresh, there are at least three that fall thuddingly flat. Rock suffers
a problem common to comedians moving from sketches to features; he hasn't quite
been able to get his performance level above caricature. To his credit, he's made more of this than you'd expect from the lame premise.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
The results fall short of the grown-up comedy about seven-year itches it could've been, asking the Hamlet-like question: to scratch or not to scratch?
|
| 63 |
Premiere
Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife is less interesting, and less successful, as a remake of a much-bruited '70s art film than it is as a compendium of Rockian observations on the current state of the African-American bourgeoisie.
|
| 60 |
Salon.com
The movie doesn't for a moment pretend to be subtle, and it has a sprawling, unfocused quality. But it's got some juice, and it's even faithful, in some surprising ways, to the essence of the original.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Despite the creakiness of the vehicle, there are some genuinely funny moments and observations.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It wants to be both an art-film homage and a rollicking, outrageous sex farce, and it's not really enough of either to make an impression.
|
| 50 |
Rolling Stone
Mixing Rock with ooh-la-la turns out to be as appetizing as chalk and cheese.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
The movie, full of wan gags and tedious situations, is directed blandly by Rock.
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A movie that provokes as many rueful sighs as it does bruising laughs.
|
| 50 |
Variety
The main drawback is that 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.
|
| 50 |
Entertainment Weekly
I Think I Love My Wife has got to be the unlikeliest French New Wave classic ever to be retrofitted by a famous African-American stand-up comedian best known for his stinging social commentary -- at least until Dave Chappelle remakes Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" as a hip-hop caper.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Washington's take on the seductress is so saucy, so unapologetic, such a brash blend of insouciant charm and raw sex appeal, that she swipes the picture from right under its nominal star. The only problem is that her theft inadvertently tips the balance of the moral dilemma, shifting it seismically all the way from "He'd be a fool to succumb" to "He'd be a coward not to."
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
Despite the nice touches at the corners, the center does not hold. In I Think I Love My Wife, there's too much emphasis on the Think.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
The movie, instead, is a work of giddy self-sabotage that seems determined to matter and not matter at the same time.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
It's unimaginative, crude and so derivative it hurts.
|
| 50 |
Portland Oregonian
Chris Rock probably has a solid writer/director effort in him. This isn't it.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
If you're looking for Rock's trademark smart-ass wit, you'll want to look somewhere else. Likewise when it comes to a movie with something fresh to say about the balancing act that is wedded bliss.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
Toddy Burton
The movie becomes a weak rethinking of a quality film.
|
| 40 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
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.
|
| 40 |
The Hollywood Reporter
In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock does something entirely unexpected. He isn't funny.
|
| 38 |
Charlotte Observer
Attaching Chris Rock to I Think I Love My Wife is like chaining a Kentucky Derby winner to the merry-go-round in a petting zoo. His humor is hobbled, his personality dulled, his energy depleted. Who's responsible for this lapse in judgment? Chris Rock.
|
| 38 |
TV Guide
Forgetting that French New Wave directors often turned to Hollywood for inspiration, cinema snobs will doubtless be outraged that Hollywood would dare remake such a beloved Rohmer masterpiece, when in fact, tone aside, "Chloe In The Afternoon" isn't all that different from "The Seven Year Itch."
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
This may not be as ill considered as it sounds--some of the sharpest material in Rock's last concert special, "Never Scared," dealt with the eternal conflict between men and women--but his crowd-pleasing gags tend to clash with Rohmer's sly moral comedy.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
Nathan Lee
Rock capably directs a screenplay graced with one or two chuckles ("You stare at a soccer mom too long and they'll post your name on the Internet") and soured by a whole lot of misogyny.
|
| 25 |
New York Post
Rock appears to have edited I Think I Love My Wife with a roulette wheel.
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