Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Sunita Mani
Director: Jay Roach
Where to watch: In theatres
Rating: ***1/2
Roses Review
Director Jay Roach’s The Roses is a glossy update of Warren Adler’s story of a marriage falling apart, made famous by Danny DeVito’s 1989 film, The War of The Roses. In this new version, the modern world highlights how love and property clash. The film begins in therapy, then traces the passion, humour, and mistakes that lead Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) to their problems.
The setup feels familiar: success divides, failure unites, until resentment grows fangs. Ivy’s seafood joint (with the spectacularly subtle name We’ve Got Crabs!) flourishes, while Theo’s architectural dreams collapse quite literally into rubble. From there, their partnership sours into duels of wit, sabotage, and simmering contempt. Roach keeps the surface glossy, setting the drama in Mendocino, California, while writer Tony McNamara ensures the undercurrent stays acid black.
The film sometimes bites off more than it can chew, especially with its overstuffed gallery of friends, lawyers, and dinner-party guests. Yet, even as the subplots wobble, the central sparring match remains deliciously savage.
Actors' Performance
The film works because of Colman and Cumberbatch. They deliver every line sharply. Colman’s Ivy shows emotion ranging from warmth to cold with ease. Cumberbatch, not usually comic, handles it well. His Theo is proud, hurt, and human.
Their chemistry is as much venom as vinegar, a constant reminder that cruelty can be its own form of intimacy. When the script threatens to slip into melodrama, it’s the pair’s sly timing and lived-in rapport that keep the whole thing afloat. Among the supporting cast, Andy Samberg provides a few muted laughs, while Kate McKinnon, alas, seems to have wandered in from a different, brasher comedy. Allison Janney, however, burns the screen in a brief turn as a divorce lawyer who is tough, sharp and ruthlessly intimidating.
Music and Aesthetics
Visually, Roach plays it safe. The interiors gleam like a lifestyle magazine spread, the coastal landscapes shimmer, and the infamous dream house is more real-estate porn than gothic battleground. The result is attractive but oddly antiseptic, leaving little space for the anarchic chaos that the premise demands. Devon doubling for California is serviceable at best, but the pristine gloss tends to mute the rancour.
Musically, the score serves as a polite chaperone rather than a full-throated participant. One misses the operatic excesses that might have matched the Roses’ spiral into mutually assured destruction. Still, the clipped dialogue and the actors’ cadences almost become their own rhythm section, despite being set to music.
FPJ Verdict
Overall, the film isn’t as gleefully outrageous as its predecessor, nor does it quite escape the constraints of glossy mainstream comedy. Yet thanks to Colman and Cumberbatch’s corrosive brilliance, it blooms into something jaggedly entertaining. It is less a rom-com gone wrong than a dark farce about ambition, ego, and the absurdity of imagining that marriage can withstand both.
In the end, the film leaves us with a simple truth: in love, as in real estate, location is everything, especially when it’s the place you’ll eventually burn to the ground.
