Danny DeVito’s The War of the Roses felt like the last word on marital warfare when it was released in 1989, but screenwriter Tony McNamara clearly thinks there’s more mud to be slung and carnage to dig into in this new adaptation of Warren Adler’s 1981 best selling novel. This 2025 update, simply titled The Roses, swaps out the visual anarchy of the original for something sharper, crueller, and more in tune with our times. The result is a biting tragicomedy that thrives on its central performances, even if visually it can seem a little cheap.
Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch) fall for each other in a whirlwind of chaos—he barges into her restaurant kitchen, she brandishes a knife, and before you know it they’re doing the did in the walk-in fridge. McNamara sets them up as a fairytale couple, but the cracks appear fast. Ivy’s humble seaside restaurant in sunny California, We’ve Got Crabs!, suddenly becomes a critics’ darling, while Theo’s grand architectural project collapses in spectacular fashion. From there, resentment and jealousy fester, pushing the couple into absurd extremes.
The dialogue is sharp. A line like “Never leave me, but when you do, will you kill me on the way out?” lands with both a sting and a smirk. What makes it work, though, is Colman and Cumberbatch. Longtime friends off-screen, they’re simply electric here.
Colman brings her trademark mix of warmth and steel and posh swearing, while Cumberbatch is all wounded pride and manic energy. Together they’re both hilarious and heart-breaking—sometimes in the same breath.
Where The Roses only slightly falters is in its look and feel. Director Jay Roach keeps everything slick and polished, but often feels a little too glossy, when a messier, more dangerous edge might have better served the material better. Devon doubling as Northern California doesn’t convince, and while the supporting cast (Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Jamie Demetriou, Zoë Chao) add a few well-aimed laughs, it often feels like they’re in a different movie, one that is a lot more straightforwardly comical that the material require. In the end, they never really break through the Colman–Cumberbatch show. You sense there’s a more visually adventurous version of this film waiting to burst out, one that matches the verbal savagery with the same level of cinematic bite.
Still, it’s hard to complain when the central relationship is this compelling. The Roses is funny, nasty, and unexpectedly sad, a reminder that love and hate aren’t opposites but two sides of the same jagged coin. It may lack the gonzo energy of DeVito’s original, but it carves out its own cruel little space.
