When a husband tells a marriage therapist that he would rather live with his wife than a wolf, you may grimace. When she cites having arms as one of his loveable attributes, you may cringe. Or laugh. Or both. Even as you witness the disintegration of a marriage, you can appreciate the subversive connection this couple still shares.
Meet The Roses, as portrayed in the new movie from director Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Bombshell). Collaborating with the Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara (an Academy Award nominee for The Favourite and Poor Things), Roach has crafted a cynical remake of director Danny DeVito’s The War of the Roses (1989), both based on Warren Adler’s novel of that title. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner played the warring couple then. Now we have Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman.
The formal narrative remains the same. The lead characters meet cute, as in a rom com; they forge an outwardly successful partnership in terms of love, children, home and career; and, ultimately, pressures both internal and external push them well beyond the edge. Along the way, the filmmakers have to keep this evolving relationship organic.
Make no mistake about it. It helps immensely that Cumberbatch and Colman are British. They deliver their lines, however ludicrous, with impeccable precision. Their facial expressions speak volumes. They exude professionalism. They almost make you overlook the stumbles in the storytelling.
Their characters, Theo and Ivy, meet in a London restaurant where she’s pretty much fed up working in the kitchen. He has a very promising career as an architect. They connect–in the kitchen, in fact–and relocate to Northern California. His career goes up in a storm, literally, and her passion for food heats up when she opens a seaside bistro called We’ve Got Crabs. (Well, it’s true. The menu proves it.) The critics adore her culinary creations, while his critics devour him. The table has been set for a simmering progression of regret and resentment.
Ivy’s newfound success increasingly takes her away from home, while the fitness-conscious-to-a-fault Theo attends to mundane domestic chores and does his best raising a pair of pre-teen kids who give new meaning to the words “precocious” and “pretentious.” Just consider their parents. In a clever plot twist, her celebrity earnings fund his irrepressible urge to build his ideal house, just as he had encouraged her to open her own restaurant.
This darkly comedic universe also features Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, two Saturday Night Live alums, as a rather odd couple of their own, the Roses’ best friends. The always welcome Allison Janney makes a notable, if brief, appearance as a divorce attorney.
Even though Cumberbatch and Colman grace the proceedings with their sly, insinuating delivery–mind you, they really seem to be enjoying themselves as actors–the script and direction let them down. Compared with The War of the Roses, their escalating feud–and the forms it takes–are not as richly detailed. The moments of remembrance and indecision, along with their continued expressions of love, are increasingly subsumed by the absurdity of their relationship. The chemistry necessary to tell their story dissipates.
That’s not to say that the movie consistently misses the mark. Roach and McNamara introduce certain elements that resonate from the earlier picture. The chandelier returns, along with a dog (assigned to a different character). So do the antique elements–in this case, amusingly, one of Julia Child’s stoves and a fifteenth-century dining table from a Spanish monastery. And they effectively update the original with the inclusion of social media. Yes, relationships and reputations have changed a lot since 1989.
Credit to German cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister (True Detective, Tár). The panoramic outdoor scenes are impressive, and the indoor scenes at the “dream house” are exquisitely lit and shot, with balanced proportions, clean lines, sharp angles, and well-defined spaces. Theo would approve.
Tonally, The Roses often lurches awkwardly from heartfelt drama to savagely black comedy. Yet it still entertains, as a vehicle for its stars and as an over-the-top cautionary tale. Just beware of a home automation system that knows how to take directions.
