The Roses, 2025.
Directed by Jay Roach.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Demetriou, Zoë Chao, Belinda Bromilow, Sunita Mani, Delaney Quinn, Hala Finley, Ollie Robinson, Wells Rappaport, Caroline Partridge, Margaret Clunie, Ollie Dabbous, Belinda Bromilow, Akie Kotabe, Emily Piggford, and Matt Corboy.
SYNOPSIS:
A tinderbox of competition and resentments underneath the façade of a picture-perfect couple is ignited when the husband’s professional dreams come crashing down.
If there must be a remake of War of the Roses (apparently, every property under the newly acquired Fox license must be reimagined with Disney’s ownership), director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents) is a solid, sensible choice. The razor-sharp Tony McNamara (Poor Things) is an even more tantalizing choice, here as the writer adapting both the 1989 Danny DeVito-helmed original and the book by Warren Adler. For Jay Roach, it’s not that he has a keen eye for visual style and distinctiveness (he doesn’t), but more that the premise plays to his strength of building elaborately outrageous comedic set pieces that are absurdly hilarious while grounded in some semblance of human emotion. Here, he is also working with a proven Oscar-nominated screenwriter who can make the barbs between bitter spouses shock and sting.
Some of that has translated from paper to execution, but for the most part, The Roses is disappointingly trying to be little more than a modern update, sticking too close to the original. Its final act comes alive, eliciting mean-spirited cackles by way of having effectively gotten through the fact that both architect Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and seafood chef/restaurant owner Ivy Rose (Olivia Colman) are both selfish, egotistical, narcissistic workaholics with room for improvement the size of the Atlantic Ocean. There is no right and wrong between them; they are both self absorbed instigators of the highest order, meaning that by the time their cruelty toward one another reaches a fever pitch, we aren’t concerned with the morality and horror of it all but rather delighting in their expressed hatred in one another that has gone from verbal to Looney Tunes pranks and physicality.
Therein also lies the problem, in that Jay Roach is only allowed roughly 1/3rd of the running time to operate within his wheelhouse, which is the type of comedy that made Meet the Parents such a defining comedy of the 200s and part of the marketing appeal behind this remake. On one hand, the slow buildup is admittedly necessary to ensure that the correct response is there from viewers throughout that third act. However, everything before then is a tonal tightrope he can’t handle, making for a film that is often only salvaged by the nasty burns husband and wife sling at one another. The ensemble also comes away unscathed, with some scene-stealing performances from Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as a married couple publicly faking happiness.
As for Theo and Ivy – who have a meet cute over work dissatisfaction and develop an instant attraction, making love in the janitor’s room on her job – the bickering is there (he is a needy workaholic, she can never take anything seriously and is incapable of apologizing) but is only exacerbated when the gender roles are reversed upon a disastrous incident involving a torrential storm destroying one of his buildings that tanks his career and turns him into a meme. Ivy’s career is on the upswing since the harsh weather fortunately brought in a food critic who has turned her crab shack into an overnight sensation. His work life is up in flames, and she is on the verge of expansion and awards.
The Roses wants to dig at everything from gender roles to work/family balance to the idea that the children (young, but teenagers by the narrative’s conclusion and played by two sets of actors) have more sanity than them and wouldn’t lose any sleep over a divorce, not to mention incorporating modern technology blackmail techniques such as deepfaking, but without any depth or purpose. It’s a film that’s constantly reminding viewers it’s a contemporary version of this story, with no idea what it wants to do with those elements beyond implementing and gesturing at them.
Then there is the editing, which is just as clunky as the storytelling, with disorienting transitions that fail to convey a passage of time. In one scene, Theo and Ivy are on the phone with her, giving him sudden news that she is on a flight to LA, only to cut to a shot of her arriving home after what must have been days. More of a detriment, the film struggles to work in emotions and struggles that feel genuine. Ivy grows to resent Theo for having a stronger connection with the children than she does, which feels unrealistic and forces the escalation of the conflict between them artificially.
Since the film is too busy jumping through time, there isn’t enough to show that such prestigious popularity would keep Ivy comically distant from her children. It’s also a stretch that the kids would suddenly become fitness-obsessed at the whim of their father. Some of what is here that’s intended to be funny or even dramatic comes across as a halfhearted and contrived manner to push the plot along.
The one constant is that Theo and Ivy are given room to verbally cut each other down from scene to scene, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman two of the best in the industry at delivering such scathing remarks. It’s enough to make the chaotically evil yet disturbingly funny third act work, culminating in a scene that would have been a contender for Ending of the Year if the rest of The Roses had either been as diabolically entertaining or knew why it was updating this material for a modern world.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
