BEFORE: Chris Rock carries over again from "The Week Of", and after that film, since I was already on Netflix, I watched his latest stand-up special, "Tamborine". I didn't know he got divorced, but he talked about it in the special, taking some of the blame for his cheating ways. Sure, it takes some guts to admit wrongdoing in that sense, but of course he was also taking advantage of the situation by finding the humor in it and filling up time during a stand-up show, so in terms of self-improvement, it's probably a wash.
Now here's the line-up for the "31 Days of Oscar" programming on TCM tomorrow, February 8. They're finally hitting "Comedies" as the main theme, followed by the face-off for "Most Effective Therapy Session" and "Best True Crime". I've got a good feeling about this schedule:
4:15 am "The Front Page" (1931)
6:00 am "Adam's Rib" (1949)
8:00 am "Ninotchka" (1939)
10:00 am "Tom Jones" (1963)
12:15 pm "The Great Dictator" (1940)
2:30 pm "My Favorite Wife" (1940)
4:00 pm "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936)
6:00 pm "The Sunshine Boys" (1975)
8:00 pm "Now, Voyager" (1942)
10:15 pm "The Prince of Tides" (1991)
12:45 am "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)
2:45 am "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)
Finally, I'm hitting 10 for 12 tomorrow - I haven't seen the original version of "The Front Page", just the 1974 remake, and I haven't seen "Ninotchka", just the 1957 remake that was re-titled "Silk Stockings". But thanks to my other chains focused on Tracy + Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis and Gary Cooper, I've seen all the others. So now I'll be at 42 seen out of 92, up to 45%.
THE PLOT: A married man who daydreams about being with other women finds his will and morals tested after he's visited by the ex-mistress of an old friend.
AFTER: After watching that Chris Rock stand-up special, now I'm starting to wonder if some of his more recent roles are partially autobiographical, because he played a divorced dad in "The Week Of", a divorced and remarried dad in "2 Days in New York", and in this one, released back in 2007, he played a married guy who was thinking of cheating on his wife. At that point in his life he would have been married for 11 years, so it's certainly possible that this was on his mind. But you can't really come down on someone for having fantasies about women other than his wife, right? I mean, even Jimmy Carter admitted that he'd lusted after other women, committed adultery in his mind. I get that we all draw that line in a different place, but just THINKING about it is very different from DOING it. Then you've got Mike Pence, who won't have dinner with a female friend unless his wife is also there. That's one way to deal with temptation, just by making sure that you're not putting yourself in a position where you're tempted in the first place. Whatever works for you, I guess.
Be warned that Chris Rock co-wrote this film with Louis C.K., who's not exactly in many people's good graces right now, as a divorced guy himself who got called on the carpet for the way he was treating women, making unwanted sexual advances. I know this film came out long before that scandal, but you can sort of see a precursor to it here, as Rock's character imagines himself as a single man, walking up to random women in the park and propositioning them quite blatantly. Doesn't anybody want to date any more? How many phone apps are there now for people who want to skip dinner and drinks and go right to the "Let's get it on" stage? Apparently romance is dead.
But anyway, about the film. Rock's character finds himself married to a woman who's lost interest in sex, now that they have two small kids - so it seems like there's been a long "dry spell". Any attempts to have sex with his wife are met with excuses, or petty arguments, or one or both of them being too tired, or scheduling conflicts. Neither one is making the effort to get on the same page, it seems, which means they're enjoying all the comforts of being in a stable relationship - double incomes, spending time with the kids, having movie nights, having someone there to talk with about your workday, but not all of the benefits. So naturally he feels like the thrill might be gone. (Didn't he see "Wakefield"? Maybe he should try living in the attic over the garage and watching his wife from afar, just to prove a point. No, wait, forget that, it's a terrible idea.)
Meanwhile, he goes into Manhattan every day and admires all the beautiful women on the train, the ones who eat at the pizza place, and the ones who work at Saks selling him shirts. Umm, he knows they're not really interested in him, they just work on commission, right? But I get it, it's kind of like how all food looks really great when you're on a diet. And when you go a long time without eating, any food tastes better - I skipped lunch one day last week, came home and had just a ham sandwich, and it was amazing. Hunger will do that, and sex kind of works the same way. Not enough and you starve, but too much and you don't really appreciate it.
Into this dangerous situation comes an old friend - I don't know why the writers didn't make her an ex-girlfriend, that would have worked just as well here. But she's a platonic friend from the past, and she's moved back to the city, and needs to use him as a job reference. This leads to her needing his help to find an apartment, his help getting her things from her ex-boyfriend's apartment, and so on. Before long she's showing up regularly at his job, and the secretaries are starting to talk. Everyone figures he must be cheating on his wife, even his co-worker who DOES cheat on his wife, but tells him not to. This is a bit of an odd choice for a character, how does a cheating man get to act as an expert on relationships? It seems rather hypocritical to hold his friend to a higher standard than he holds himself.
Anyway, he tries to keep her at arm's length, but since a couple of mishaps at home lead to another argument, he finds himself drawn more toward the (hotter) single friend. And then even when he tries to cut off all ties to her, that only seems to make her want him more. She even gets engaged, but that also just seems like a ploy to get his attention, and force the issue. The question then becomes, how close to the line he's drawn for himself is he willing to go? No spoilers here, but the film's title does make for a pretty obvious clue. It really just boils down to two choices - if you're not happy in your current relationship, you can either get out of it, or work on making it better. Anything else just isn't a viable solution over time. The main message of the film is that you can't choose where you're born, your family, or in some cases, who you love. But you can choose HOW you love, and that's something to think about.
But (and you just knew there'd be a but, right?) if anything this film over-simplifies women - and we need to remember that many of them are very complex creatures. To fall back on such simple stereotypes like "married women don't want sex" or "single women need to ask men for help with things" and the big one, "every woman you see, on the train, in the park, at the office is a potential sex object". Yeah, that's the sort of thinking that got Louis C.K. in trouble, wasn't it?
NITPICK POINT: Much of the Manhattan geography seen here is random and doesn't make much sense. We see Richard walking across Park Ave, just south of the MetLife building - this makes sense if he got off the Metro-North at Grand Central and his office is over near Times Square, let's say. But then why does he go to the Spinelli's pizza shop on 7th Ave. across from Madison Square Garden. Yep, I recognized the Pizza & Gyros sign, because after Spinelli's closed it was a Carl's Jr. for a couple of months last year, but that folded and the Pizza/Gyros sign is visible again now. There just MUST have been another pizza place closer to his office, and who walks over 10 blocks in Manhattan just to get mediocre pizza? Nobody, that's who.
Also starring Kerry Washington (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Gina Torres (last seen in "Serenity"), Steve Buscemi (also carrying over from "The Week Of"), Edward Herrmann (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Welker White (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Samantha Ivers (last seen in "Inside Man"), Cassandra Freeman (ditto), Michael Kenneth Williams (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Orlando Jones (last seen in "Bedazzled"), Stephen A. Smith, Wendell Pierce (last seen in "The Gift"), Milan Howard, Roz Ryan, Christina Vidal, Eliza Coupe, GQ, Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Gold"), Linda Powell, Eva Marcille, James Saito, Justina Machado, with a cameo from Matthew Morrison (last seen in "Music and Lyrics").
RATING: 4 out of 10 Biz Markie songs
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