[...]he explains as we see him entering his office building, he knows every other person of color who works there. A quarter of a beat goes by, and we see him passing the janitor and the cleaning lady, cheerfully calling them by name.

Sure, many city workplaces are more integrated than that.

As someone who worked in an environment similar to that of Chris Rock's character, I'd have to slide with Chris, actually. In my environment, all the cleaning staff were black, and other "faces like mine" were rare on the ground in the actual staff.

And yes, this was just a couple of years ago.

I'm not a rabble-rouser. I'd love to say he's pushing a point. But, in my experience, he's dead on target.

I just love the idea of Chris Rock remaking an Eric Rohmer movie!

I've been harboring a fantasy that Spike Lee would do a remake of Fellini's "I Vitelloni", so when I read that Chris Rock remade Rohmer's "Love in the Afternoon", I was curious. Then I saw a clip online and knew it was going to be brilliant.

I'm taking my friends and seeing this one in a theatre.

What a great idea to remake Eric Rohmer in the US - and for Chris Rock to do it no less. Rohmers films, like so many French films, are so comfortably homogenous and bourgeois, you'd think everyone in the whole world was white and wore a headband and smart blazer to go cycling to the boulangerie on a sunny afternoon.

Something else occurred to me as I read this article - Eric Rohmers characters have an aimlessness that seems to come from achieved ambition, or achieved comfort, at least. They are well fed, well housed, well looked after in every way, and so they have an indolence that allows them to explore the gently neurotic corners of the psyches.

By placing black characters in a world like this it perhaps heightens the bourgeois effect of this, while calling attention to it and showing how luxurious and unnatural it is at the same time.

His stand up act is all about how he never has sex anymore. Do these guys ever pause to look at themselves and consider that maybe they are not making any effort to please their partner? I wonder how often Mr. C.K. would put up with intercourse that never satisfied him.

That's alot of assumptions, Lola. One, that C.K. is entirely truthful about the lack of sex in his relationship (you'll find that exaggeration is an oft used comedic device) and two, that said lack would be because he didn't satisfy his partner.

I'm guessing you don't have children. Especially if both parents work, children can kill a "normal" sex life quite easily. There are many reasons for this but most have to do with exhaustion and lack of privacy. Every couple (including myself & my wife) I've ever been friends with always swear up and down that it'll never happen to them - and it happens to every one of us. Those who are more inclined to make our marriages work make up the difference in other ways - there's more to life that just sexual pleasure. Those who aren't so inclined, - and BTW you're comments are textbook in this concern - don't and usually end up cheating, divorcing or both.

I'm thinking, since your "bad sex" meme wasn't brought up at all before you're letter, you're actually doing a little "projecting" here. Get some relationship counseling, sweetie...

This sounds like a film about the ill effects of giving up autonomy for social conformity and of culturally-enforced sexual repression.

Isn’t that what the elevator scene is about? In which Richard metaphorically disowns an uninhibited, vital, naturally healthy part of self?

Disappointing that the review seemed to uncomfortably avoid the central theme of the film – sex.

Chris Rock may be funny to some people, but after seeing hin on David Letterman making fun of white people it made me believe he is nothing but a racist. His mouth just cost him money, not much, just two movie tickets. Me and my wife will go see something more entertaining and with less "F" words. I'm sure gangbangers,foul mouth comedians,and rappers will love it though.

I hate pitting two black people against each other; although race and culture is shared, imagination is free-range territory. But Eddie Murphy's Norbit still rankles and by comparing Rock's new film foray to Murphy's, we've hit on a telling point.

Rock turned away from the trite and helped write an updated version of a Rohmer film, presenting both a funny and witty view of modern, upscale, black Americans--cerebral, slightly edgy and, yes, prettified in the way most romantic comedies are packaged.

Then we have Norbit.

Murphy leans on the stereotypical for his Cro Magnon view of the world, blowing up his Monster Mammy to grotesque proportions. That he made money on this film hurts, not only because of his crude depictions but also because he's been rewarded so highly for something so downright stupid, demeaning, and insulting.

While Rock may not get 30 million at the box office, I think he still comes off the winner. Respecting one's audience and caring about the media one creates are important values for an artist, values that dictate one's longevity in the business.

Wasn't the Rohmer original called CHLOE IN THE AFTERNOON? LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON was a 1957 Billy Wilder movie with Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn.

They are a perfect partnership for this movie, because when it comes to sex their acts really are the same: how married people alternate between desperately hating their life and desperately loving their partner, and often at the same time. You might almost think they were stealing each other's jokes, they're so similar.

Rock's jokes in this vein are more amiable and gentle than Louis', but they both use stand-up as a way of working through the hate-my-wife part of their souls so they're left only with the love when they get offstage.

On the other hand, maybe it's all just an act that works. As Rock told Bill Maher when Maher asked him if the anti-marriage bits hurt his marriage: "Well, making money is real good for the marriage."