Imperfect though it may be, Chris Rock's I Think I love My Wife is an artistic step forward, and a strange sort of confession about his beliefs in married life.

Rock playas married man Richard Cooper, who's having problems with his wife. She won't fuck him. Plain and simple. They raise their kids, and that seems to be going well, but he's gotten bored. And his wife Brenda (Gina Torres) does nothing to give him sexual pleasure. He lives in a suburb outside of New York, and enjoys the pleasures of transit times and late lunches, covertly looking at the hot women around him.

Then Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington) enters his life. She's a friend of a friend who stumbles upon him and the two gain a quick friendship. But the office is not pleased with his new friend, including pussy hound George (Steve Buscemi), who knows Richard doesn’t have it in him to fuck around.

But their relationship points out the disparities, and lack of romance at home, and though there is no mention of actual fucking, it's definitely on both of their minds. He's attracted to the freedom, and she's attracted to the stability, but he's got kids. At first he reacts by shutting out the sexuality in his life, and then he goes further by pursuing his desire for Nikki.

Adapted from Eric Rohmer's far superior Chloe in the Afternoon, aka Love in the Afternoon, this film finally gives Rock some meat to chew on in a film that isn't just jokes and jokes and jokes and jokes. There are real moments in the film, and a fishing with money sequence that manages to achieve some real poetry.

The direction, though is somewhat lacking, though it's smart for Rock to shoot in New York. It feels real, even if he doesn't have a great eye. The main thing is that the relationship between his wife, who simply won't fuck him, never achieves a real peace, even in the film's ending. She simply isn't fucking him, even when he wants to fuck for about 98% of the running time. It's a real problem, and though she compromises at the end, she's played as a ball busting prude who could almost be a nun. It's never portrayed as a real partnership and that imbalance, even if Richard wants to fuck some random girl, always sides with Richard's desire to just have sex with his wife. She is literally shown driving him away But this kind of works for the film, except in the denouement, as it comes across as confessional. What it says about Rock and his relationships is… well, up to the viewer

Fox presents the film in anamorphic widescreen(2.35:1) and pan and scan.The film comes with a commentary by Rock, deleted scenes, and a featurette.