THE ROSES - Mark Reviews Movies

The Roses, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 28, 2025

One never quite gets the sense that the married couple of the title really, truly, and genuinely hate each other in The Roses. That might seem to go against the entire point of yet again adapting Warren Adler's novel The War of the Roses, which was originally turned into a very dark and mostly unforgiving film—still a comedy, though—in 1989. The Roses here, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, almost seem to convince themselves that there must be hate in this relationship. They have been married for more than a decade, after all, and it's pretty much a cliché that fondness fades and the little resentments build up in a marriage over those years.

Theo (Cumberbatch) and Ivy (Olivia Colman) start to believe that must be the case. He says as much at one point, telling his wife that there are times when he's angry at her for no particular reason and just has to get past that feeling. For obvious reasons, she takes that revelation personally, because Ivy doesn't feel that way about Theo. Well, it's not worthy of any long-term notice, at least, if she does, and beyond that, it's just sort of rude to state something so mean in such plain terms in her mind.

The first film version of the Adler book was funny because it reveled in the increasing cruelty of its central couple. This version, written by Tony McNamara and directed by Jay Roach, is also funny, although in a completely different way than its predecessor. This one is more a comedy of errors that begins with some innocent misunderstandings, some unfortunate miscommunications, and a lot of biased misinterpretations. All of those mistakes eventually turn physical, so that, like in the original film, Theo and Ivy are finally running around an elaborate, fancy home trying to kill each other—or acting in such ways that death seems inevitable.

Even so, we never completely buy that these two actually mean it, and that makes the film's opening note that it's "a love story" feel accurate, as unlikely as that may seem by the time the attempted killing arrives. It also, in a weird way, transforms the material into a bit of a tragedy—still a comedy, though. These two are so likeable, even as and because of the way they hurl insults at each other, that we want them to figure out where and why things went wrong between them.

There, of course, is the real rub of the film, because McNamara's screenplay has us pondering the same question once it becomes clear that Theo and Ivy are on their way toward differences that are irreconcilable. Is it because Theo, a well-regarded architect at the story's start, makes a significant mistake in the design of what he hopes will become his signature building? Is it on account of Ivy, a cook who transitions her career into a hobby after the couple has a pair of kids, lets her newfound ambitions get the better of everything else in her life?

Before all of that, the two seem happy enough, having met in London by chance, run off together to California almost immediately after meeting, and found some balance in their relationship that means they're both content personally and professionally. When Theo's career is on the rise, he buys Ivy an old restaurant where she can live out her old dream to whatever extent she wants to. Then, a freak storm levels the building Theo designed, because he was stubborn about putting a real ship's sail made of steel on top, and leads more customers than have ever been in Ivy's seafood restaurant at one time.

With his fortunes fallen—quite literally—and hers on the rise, the two decide to swap roles. She'll make the money, and he'll take over the care of the couple's two kids. Theo doesn't want to look like a failure, especially to his wife, and Ivy has no idea how much she could enjoy running a popular restaurant and, eventually, starting a culinary empire until it actually happens.

We can understand and sympathize with both of these predicaments, and that, really, makes the most significant change in the material. When the two start insulting each other, it almost seems like good-natured ribbing (Their friends and colleagues certainly see and hear it that way, particularly because of the pair's British accents). It almost comes across like a little game about how far each can push a devastating observation without taking it too far. Indeed, a brief flash-forward to a couple's therapy session has the pair laughing hysterically by the end, simply because Ivy's list of things she loves about Theo quickly turns into an escalation of vulgarity aimed at him.

Both of them know when they do or are about take things too far, as well, such as when Theo has to tell himself not to be jerk, after his wife returns from a spontaneous professional getaway, and when Ivy goes into the plane's lavatory, on the way home from a disastrous non-vacation, in order to scold herself into apologizing through her tears. The humor here isn't in how mean they are. It's in how mean they almost accidentally become and, at certain point, how neither can stop that out of stubbornness and the assumption that it's all past the point of no return.

The biggest difference between these two versions, then, is that the original had caricatures, which worked in its cold-blooded favor, and this one possesses characters, which sometimes feels at odds when the material goes for a cheap joke or as it becomes more absurd. The Roses is a balancing act of wicked comedy and a serious study of a marriage in peril. It mostly succeeds in the hands of Cumberbatch and Colman, who can be drolly funny and achingly vulnerable—sometimes at the same time here.

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