Review: The Roses

There’s a moment early in The Roses where Benedict Cumberbatch’s Theo and Olivia Colman’s Ivy, seated stiffly in therapy, are tasked with naming ten positive qualities in one another. They stall, sigh, and ultimately dissolve into laughter at their shared exasperation. It’s a fleeting scene of warmth and wit, the kind of tonal balancing act that the film itself never quite manages. Director Jay Roach’s adaptation of Warren Adler’s The War of the Roses wants to be a bruising comedy about love curdling into rivalry, but it too often skews broad and unfocused, sacrificing bite for bounce.

That imbalance feels particularly glaring given the film’s lineage. Danny DeVito’s 1989 The War of the Roses was gleefully vicious in skewering Reagan-era materialism and marital collapse, a satire with teeth sharp enough to draw blood. Roach, working from a script by Tony McNamara (The Favourite, Poor Things), goes lighter, much lighter, and in doing so, blunts both the comedy and the tragedy. His version is less dark parable, more upscale rom-com-gone-wrong, and despite flashes of inspiration, The Roses lands in the middle of the road.

Theo and Ivy Rose have been married for a decade, raising twins in their sunlit Northern California home. He’s an architect on the rise; she’s a chef whose ambitions have been tempered by domestic duty. When a storm topples Theo’s prized museum design, humiliatingly captured in a viral video (the film's biggest laugh), and a critic anoints Ivy’s cooking the next culinary sensation, their power dynamic flips. Suddenly, Theo is sidelined while Ivy ascends, and what begins as mutual support curdles into resentment, competition, and an increasingly absurd battle of egos.

On paper, this setup should sing. McNamara’s dialogue retains some of his signature sting, and Colman in particular thrives on prickly contradictions. Her Ivy is at once maternal, ruthless, and wounded, leaning into Colman’s gift for playing characters whose laughter can turn into a sob mid-breath. Cumberbatch, less naturally attuned to comedy, acquits himself well as Theo, especially in moments where his polished façade cracks to reveal raw, petty insecurity. Their push-pull chemistry is the film’s strongest asset, and when The Roses leans into the idea that affection and animosity can co-exist, it hums.

The problem is that Roach never finds a coherent tone to match his leads. Best known for the elastic goofiness of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents, he directs as though marital implosion is a sitcom setup. Supporting players like Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, as the couple’s friends, are stranded in sketch-comedy caricature, their marital woes undercutting rather than complementing the central story. Set pieces that should spiral into acidic absurdity, like the couple’s escalating attempts to sabotage one another, instead play like broad slapstick. The infamous house-as-battlefield from DeVito’s film is reimagined here as Theo refusing to surrender the home he designed, but rather than building to operatic destruction, Roach flattens it into bouncy farce.

It doesn’t help that the film seems uninterested in interrogating its characters beyond surface-level archetypes. Theo becomes the emasculated alpha, Ivy the careerist blinded by fame. Their contradictions, so promising in early scenes, calcify into clichés. The satire of wealth and privilege is similarly toothless. Where DeVito’s film tore into the corrosive effects of greed and ego, The Roses barely musters more than a shrug toward its protagonists’ champagne problems.

That lack of commitment leaves the film flailing in its second half, when it reaches for real darkness. The more savage the antics become, the more obvious it is that Roach hasn’t laid the groundwork to make them resonate. The tonal whiplash, from winking therapy jokes to near-tragic violence, feels unearned. By the time the Roses contemplate divorce, the audience is likely to be far ahead of them, eager for relief.

None of this is to say The Roses is without pleasures. Cumberbatch and Colman elevate the material simply by showing up; there are sharp exchanges peppered throughout; and McNamara’s script occasionally zings with the kind of bitter truth that lingers after the laugh. But the film, like its central marriage, is defined more by its squandered potential than by what it accomplishes.

Danny DeVito’s shadow looms large here, not because his 1989 version is untouchable, but because it understood the savage comedy of love turned to war. The Roses, for all its pedigree and talent, settles instead for genial chaos, a marriage story that’s not quite funny enough, not quite biting enough, and not quite brave enough to follow through on its own promise.

3/5