The Roses

The Architecture of Resentment

I have been trying to pinpoint exactly when the Hollywood adult comedy died. Was it a sudden heart attack somewhere around 2012, or a slow, wheezing decline into IP-driven oblivion? Whatever the cause, its absence has left multiplexes feeling oddly sterile. So when a studio actually greenlights a $30 million R-rated marital farce like *The Roses*, you almost want to grade it on a curve just for existing. A remake of Danny DeVito’s 1989 pitch-black classic *The War of the Roses* (itself pulled from Warren Adler’s novel), this new iteration is a bizarre, compelling collision of sensibilities. It pairs the aristocratic acid of screenwriter Tony McNamara with the sitcom-broad instincts of director Jay Roach. The result becomes a lopsided beast of a film. A movie that does not always know what it wants to be, but is frequently too funny to dismiss.

The premise remains deliciously cruel, though updated for a modern coastal ecosystem. Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy (Olivia Colman) are British expats living an obnoxiously idyllic life in Northern California. He designs buildings for the ultra-wealthy. She runs a struggling beachside seafood shack called "Got Crabs" and raises their twins. They are happy, or at least they have agreed on a mutually beneficial illusion of happiness. Yet marriages are fragile ecosystems, and this one collapses overnight. A freak torrential storm literally washes away Theo’s career—destroying a highly publicized museum he designed—while simultaneously washing a stranded, desperate food critic into Ivy’s empty restaurant. By morning, Theo is a pariah and Ivy is a culinary sensation.



The power dynamic does not just shift. It violently inverts. And this is where McNamara’s script shines. Having previously mapped the bizarre contours of power and desire in *The Favourite* and *Poor Things*, McNamara has a singular ear for how people use language as a scalpel. He strips away the 1980s excess of the original film and replaces it with a distinctly 2025 brand of psychological warfare. The Roses don't immediately start throwing physical objects; they start with microaggressions. Ivy’s newfound success throws Theo into a spiral of emasculated domesticity, and the tragedy of the film is watching two people who actually loved each other realize they cannot survive without the crutch of their old roles.

Yet there’s a friction here that I am not entirely sure works. Roach—the man behind *Meet the Parents* and *Austin Powers*—has always been a competent traffic cop for big comedic set pieces, but he severely lacks the visual malice this material demands. The cinematography is bright, flat, and aggressively pedestrian. When the film begs to dip into the surreal or the claustrophobic, Roach shoots it like a premium cable pilot. *Screen Daily* hit it exactly right when they noted the adaptation "proves too broad and tonally erratic," stumbling precisely because it refuses to commit fully to the dark emotional terrain it flirts with.



Where the film absolutely succeeds, though, is in its bodies. Colman is, frankly, playing exactly in her sandbox. Before the Oscars and the prestige dramas, she was a savant of British cringe comedy (*Peep Show* is still her defining text for a reason), and she brings that terrifyingly cheerful cruelty back here. Watch her in the kitchen as she prepares a meal for her new wealthy investors. The way her shoulders relax while her eyes go dead when Theo enters the room. She communicates an entire decade of repressed ambition in the tightening of a jaw.

Cumberbatch is the real surprise. After years of playing stoic geniuses and sorcerers, his sudden, pathetic fragility here is a joy to behold. He leans into his natural angularity, letting his tall frame droop and fold in on itself as his ego takes hit after hit. There is a scene midway through the film that I cannot stop thinking about. Theo, pushed to the brink by an encounter with capitalist bro culture, launches into an unhinged, foul-mouthed tirade in their pristine living room. He paces violently, completely losing the plot, until the rant devolves into him frantically pantomiming vulgarities—only to realize his two teenage kids are standing in the doorway, staring at him. It is deeply uncomfortable. It is also the moment you realize Theo is not just a victim of circumstance; he is an overgrown child.



If only the film trusted its central duo enough to leave them alone. Instead, Roach surrounds them with an American supporting cast—including Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg—who feel like they wandered in from an entirely different movie. Their loose, improvisational SNL rhythms clash horribly with the sharp, rhythmic precision of the British leads. Every time the camera cuts to the quirky neighbors, the tension deflates. (Whether that is a flaw or a feature comes down to your patience with broad physical comedy interrupting a psychological thriller).

By the point that the third act finally descends into the inevitable, violent warfare promised by the title, it feels oddly rushed. The escalation is jagged. Yet, as the credits rolled, I felt a strange sense of gratitude. *The Roses* is messy, occasionally cowardly in its direction, and structurally uneven. Yet it’s also a movie about adults, made for adults, that dares to suggest love is not always enough to survive the ego. In a cinematic landscape terrified of human ugliness, that’s almost romantic.