? Bored with his
marriage, a New York architect (Chris Rock) meanders into a quasi-affair with
an old friend (Kerry Washington). Rock also directed this remake of Eric
Rohmer’s 1972 film Love in the Afternoon (also known as Chloé in the
Afternoon).
+ The most
interesting thing about this movie is that it’s a remake of a 30-year-old
French movie, the last of Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales.” The subject is a man
who’s become bored with his marriage, not adultery, though that threatens to be
the result. In another recent Hollywood movie on the subject [Mr. & Mrs. Smith], which
coincidentally also featured Kerry Washington, the husband and wife had been
secretly hired to kill each other, but a more serious take on the theme is
welcome.
- While Rock and
writing collaborator Louis C.K. have preserved most of the French film’s plot,
they’ve also grafted a layer of sometimes crude humor onto it that doesn’t
quite mesh. Where the earlier work was subtle, this is blunt. To give one
example, instead of having the main character wondering what kind of lives he
might lead with the pretty girls around him, this one has him ogling their
boobs, which seems to miss the point. Supposedly, it’s excitement he’s looking
for, not sex as such. But the main problem in the movie is Washington’s
character, which is probably more the fault of the way she’s written than the
way the actress plays her. Rohmer’s flirty, flighty female lead has become a
pushy manipulator. Maybe Rock thought that his own role wouldn’t seem
sympathetic unless he made it seem like she had sort of forced him into the
relationship. In any case, the result is the opposite. I didn’t like her, and
so he seemed more like a chump than a man torn by conflicting desires.
= ** It seems like
Chris Rock, having previously made the silly Head of State, was seeking
to capture the emotional honesty of Everybody Hates Chris, the acclaimed
TV series he created. But honestly, Rock has turned a talky but witty French
movie into a leaden clunker that’s likely to please neither his comic audience,
to whom it offers just a few mealy morsels, or one looking for a smart, or
involving, drama.
circulated via email 03/22/07 and posted 11/15/13
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