The Roses: Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch – Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/Searchlight Pictures
True love curdling to bitter hatred has rarely hit harder or funnier onscreen than in Danny DeVito’s ice-cold 1989 comedy The War of the Roses. Barbara and Oliver Rose, played by ’80s screen team Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, start out adoring each other in the hit adaptation of Warren Adler’s novel. So besotted (and aroused) are the well-matched pair, they can barely keep their hands, lips, and other parts to themselves.
By story’s end, though, he’s pissing on her fish dish in front of dinner guests, and she’s driving her monster SUV over his vintage Morgan roadster with him inside it. He (accidentally) kills her cat. She fakes killing his dog and feeding it to him as pâté.
They throw lower and lower blows, but Barbara Rose especially takes no prisoners. Thanks to Turner’s brilliant portrayal, she’s not a wife who has grown resentful of her husband, but someone disgusted by the pompous phony he’s become. War is declared over their ornately furnished house, and surrender is not an option. With her last, definitive gesture, Barbara reiterates just how done she is with Oliver.
That lady would guffaw her ass off at the weak-sauce war waged by the divorcing couple in The Roses, director Jay Roach’s “reimagining of the 1989 classic film.”
These Roses — architect Theo, and chef and bistro owner Ivy, played by esteemed thespians Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman — get down and dirty, and plenty nasty, in their divorce battle, but their fight lacks bite.
Colman and Cumberbatch, of course, volley barbs and insults with professional aplomb. The bickering Roses, nearing their acrimonious peak mid-movie, host one riveting dinner party with friends where bitterly funny banter is all that gets served.
Their guests — including Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as stably married couple Barry and Amy — are both aghast and emboldened to join in the “fun” by zinging their own partners with brutal truth bombs.
The table full of folks warring like the Roses marks one of the fresher spins on the original in the adaptation script by Tony McNamara (Poor Things). The reimagining of the titular pair’s romance doesn’t pay off so well.
If we’re to see the fire of their love extinguished, we need to see them ignite a fire, and it doesn’t happen. For Theo and Ivy, the initial spark isn’t carnal, though it is sensual. When he wanders into a London restaurant kitchen where she’s sous chef, it’s love at first bite of her trout carpaccio.
That could be deliciously sexy, but Colman and Cumberbatch don’t register a single watt of physical attraction as a couple, certainly not on the order of Turner and Douglas. Not that the filmmakers don’t try to convince us.
Ivy and Theo speak frequently of lusting for each other and shagging and so on, but fighting is the only physical activity we see them engaged in with any passion. Rather, Ivy and Theo, of similar drive and ambition, connect intellectually, until one stormy night brings professional disaster for him and career magic for her.
As she rockets to success as a gourmet food maven, he becomes a fitness-crazed stay-at-home dad to their two kids and stews in his sense of failure, nursing his resentment of her success.
Once he admits to occasionally feeling “dizzying hatred” for her, it’s only a matter of time before they’re waging war over their dream house by the sea. Production designer Mark Ricker has ensured their opulent home looks like a spread worth fighting for, but their war isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Roses’ acts of mischief and sabotage start at dropping live crabs into someone’s bath, and escalate to an unfunny deep fake video, mild poisoning, and other prosecutable offenses. But the ramp-up isn’t propelled by the passionate hatred that comes from something genuine and bountiful spoiling completely rotten.
Roach, a master of big-budget comedy, doesn’t nail the rhythm here, frequently leaking tension in the main event with too many zany contributions from the supporting Peanut Gallery. Allison Janney, at least, slices through any BS as a ball-breaking divorce attorney. She means business.
To the film’s detriment, hints abound that, underneath it all, the Roses don’t mean business. Their hearts aren’t in this war. They might be hellbent on destroying property and perhaps a reputation, but not on seeing their partner crushed like the love they once felt for each other.
In fact, one or both of them might still love their spouse. Isn’t that sweet? Ultimately, The Roses doesn’t stand on business the way Barbara Rose would and did, and we still stand with her.
The Roses (★★☆☆☆) is Rated R and is playing in theaters nationwide. Visitwww.fandango.com.
The War of the Roses (★★★★☆) is available on digital for rent or purchase at Prime Video. Visit www.amazon.com.
The EGOT alliance better watch out -- there's a new awards ceremony coming for their prestige.
On August 5, the first-ever televised Las Culturistas Culture Awards aired on Bravo TV, with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang hosting the star-studded ceremony.
Originally a comedy bit on their GLAAD Media Award-winning podcast Las Culturistas, Rogers and Yang’s fourth annual awards became a full-fledged Hollywood event, with many celebrities accepting their honors in person at the Orpheum Theatre.
Ready for his closeup in the '90s-set action-comedy Caught Stealing, Austin Butler is framed staring directly into camera more than once, his soulful eyes a clear window into his ill-fated character Hank Thompson.
The film -- directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Charlie Huston, based on his own 2004 novel -- makes smart use of Butler's cherubic face and strapping physicality to solidify Hank's cred as a former high school star baseball player, now a nice guy bartender in a dive bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
His girlfriend Yvonne, a saucy paramedic played by Zoë Kravitz, even delivers a whole speech about how nice a guy Hank is. The movie also captures its stars' off-the-charts chemistry, solidifying Hank and Yvonne's emotional bonds through the couple's genuine caring for one another and cute shared catchphrases.
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