I Think I Love My Wife

Plot

Richard Cooper (Chris Rock) is a very happily married and professionally successful man. He is perfectly content with his home life in suburban New York with his lovely wife Brenda (Gina Torres), a teacher, and his two young children. There is one problem in his marriage: their sex life has stagnated, leaving Richard frustrated and sex-starved. At one point, Brenda accuses Richard of being on the down-low. During those dull days at the office, he occasionally fantasizes about other women, but never acts upon his impulses.

An encounter with an attractive old friend, Nikki (Kerry Washington), suddenly casts doubt over his typically resilient self-control. At first she claims to just want to be his friend, but she begins to show up consistently at his Manhattan financial office just to talk or have lunch, which causes his boss, secretaries, and peers to view him with varying degrees of contempt. When Nikki begins to deliberately seduce Richard, he does not know what to do. Against his better judgment, he flies with her out of town for one day on an errand, where he is beaten by her boyfriend. Then he returns too late to make a sales presentation at an important business meeting, causing the loss of a lucrative contract. Later, when she and her fiancé are about to move to Los Angeles, Nikki asks Richard to come to her apartment later to say a "proper goodbye". When he gets to Nikki's apartment, he finds her in her underwear in her bathroom. In the moments before it seems Richard will consummate his attraction to Nikki, he realizes how grave the loss of his wife and children would be, so he walks out on Nikki. Richard returns home, surprising his wife, and, for the first time in the film, they begin to rebuild a genuine rapport, with a possible promise of good things to come.

Cast

Production

Charles Stone III was slated to direct but dropped out.

This is the second time Rock and Washington have been paired on screen. Previously they were in Bad Company, playing a couple.

Mumbai-based UTV Motion Pictures made its entry into the American market by co-producing the film.

Reception

The film received generally negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 19% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 105 reviews with the critical summary "Chris Rock's comedic instincts are muted and the female characters are unsatisfactorily drawn in this uneven sex farce/domestic drama mashup." Users of Rotten Tomatoes gave the film 4.6/10 average rating. Metacritic reported that critics rated the film 49/100 based on 30 reviews. Users of Metacritic gave the film an average rating of 3.8/10 based on 35 reviews. It grossed $5 million on its opening weekend, reaching #5. The film grossed a worldwide total of $13 million.

DVD release and sales

The DVD was released on August 7, 2007, selling 214,778 units in the first week. At an aggregate, 863,437 units were sold which translated to revenue of $13,527,427.