The Roses review: 'Smart, wild, entertaining'

This remake of the 80s divorce farce is "a piercing black comedy" that is "played with droll perfection" by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman.

There is so much smashing going on in the riotous marriage comedy The Roses. Egos and careers crumble, whole buildings end up in ruins – and at the centre of it all is the once-blissful, now rancid marriage of Ivy and Theo Rose, played with droll perfection by Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. The film is inspired by the Warren Adler novel, The War of the Roses, which was made into a 1989 divorce comedy with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. But this new version is revamped to hit a nerve today. Like the current Materialists, it is hyperaware of how money and success can be the root of so many evils in marriage.

Tony McNamara's screenplay, as you would expect from the writer of The Favourite and Poor Things, is a piercing black comedy. And director Jay Roach, of Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, is expert at finding mainstream humour in family dysfunction. Together they are a winning odd-couple team. But The Roses wouldn't have worked nearly as well without the deft, perfectly timed delivery of Colman, who once again shows herself to be a comic master, and of Cumberbatch. Not exactly known as a funny guy, he definitely is here. 

The story begins near the end, with the couple's relationship so bitter that their therapist tells them the marriage is doomed. "Are you even allowed to say that?" Theo asks. But it quickly flashes back to the beginning, and for a long, witty stretch the film is a rom-com. In a prickly version of a meet-cute, Ivy and Theo encounter each other in a London restaurant where she's a chef, on the night before she's due to move away for work. He is an architect so annoyed at his colleagues that he wanders from their table into the kitchen and says he could kill himself. She says she would offer him the large knife in her hand, but she needs it to keep chopping food. They fall instantly in love.

Leap ahead 10 years and the Roses are settled in California with a young son and daughter, and we can see that their marriage has thrived on their shared sardonic humour. One perfect example: they name the voice of the AI in their smart house Hal, a wink to the evil computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Theo's career is flourishing and Ivy opens a seafood restaurant named We've Got Crabs. Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) and Sunita Mani are lively in small roles as what seems to be Ivy's entire staff.

But the film cleverly turns into a reverse rom-com when Theo's career crashes while Ivy's restaurant takes off. We watch the Roses fall out of love. Unlike the start of their relationship, the end doesn't happen overnight. Theo, the beleaguered stay-at-home father, is increasingly resentful. Ivy is building a restaurant empire, taken up with spreadsheets and magazine photo shoots, and with little time for her family. The film comes uncomfortably close to positioning her as a too-ambitious woman neglecting her husband and children for her job, but fortunately never tilts over that line, as it acknowledges how much their careers matter to both Theo and Ivy.

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Throughout, Colman and Cumberbatch's performances make the dialogue much funnier than it sounds in print. When Ivy asks Hal if he wants a Negroni and the AI answers, "I don't have wants or needs," you have to hear the light-handed but loaded way Colman responds, "Marry me." The film's surprising weak spots are the lame supporting roles of the Roses' friends. Andy Samberg plays Theo's loyal best friend, Barry. He is merely Theo's foil, citing inertia as the secret of his marriage to his wife, Amy, which lets Theo recognise that he doesn't want that for himself. But Samberg delivers his lines with just the right understated spin. Barry, a real-estate lawyer, represents his friend in the divorce and voices the film's most topical theme when he tells Theo, "Divorce is mostly about real estate."

As Amy, who blatantly and persistently comes on to the uninterested Theo, Kate McKinnon is too Kate McKinnon. Her role as the oddball feels like a toned-down version of her Weird Barbie character, tailored to her style rather than this film. In other weak roles, Jamie Demetriou and Zoë Chao are Rory and Sally, friends who are constantly insulting the Roses. It's not credible that the Roses would invite this toxic couple to a dinner party, but the characters are there to help the film skewer some cultural differences. The dinner party is a raucous set piece, where the barbs the Roses toss at each other sharpen from affectionate teasing to sincere hatred. At the dinner table, when Rory and Sally try to emulate the dry British wit that has always been Ivy and Theo's style, they can only come up with witless insults and name-calling. These particular Americans just don't have the knack. But The Roses itself is a smart, wild, entertaining mix of droll British humour and glossy Hollywood film-making.

★★★★☆

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