The Roses: Black Comedy Treads the Line Between Love and Hate… Funny Because Its True
By Liz Braun
Rating: B+
Romantic comedies generally prove to be disappointing, given how rarely they are either romantic or comedic and how often they are moronic.
The Roses, thanks to leads Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch and some very sharp writing, is a happy exception. This is a brisk, blackly comic film about love, marriage and the exigencies of adult life.
Directed by Jay Roach and written by Tony McNamara, this is quite a different undertaking from the 1989 movie, The War of the Roses, although both films are based on the novel by that name by Warren Adler. The ’89 film featured movie stars Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, both at the tippy top of their box-office glory. This version has actors at the top of their game. It’s an interesting difference.
Ivy (Colman) is a chef and Theo (Cumberbatch) is an architect. They meet — more smouldering than cute — and marry. Then they move from England to California, and that’s funny right there: Americans have guns and say stupid things, don’t they?
Theo designs a maritime museum that puts him on the map, architecturally speaking, overnight. Ivy, meanwhile, runs a tiny seafood restaurant that’s not doing much business. All that is upended on the night of a huge storm, when the weather creates a reversal of fortune for Theo but brings a flood of new customers to Ivy’s modest restaurant.
Things change. Ivy is suddenly the main breadwinner, which completely alters the family dynamic. Theo is home with the kids; Ivy begins to enjoy spectacular success with her restaurant and before long is operating a food empire.
Anger and resentment build and boil over. She jets off to L.A. on business, for example, while he’s at home dealing with the kids’ head-lice. Each gets dead drunk and ruins a special occasion. Friends notice the tension between them. Then Ivy finds the perfect piece of land and Theo builds her the perfect house, and there’s peace for a bit, but the house proves to be the setting for their final showdown.
In the background of all this bickering is another married couple, friends of Ivy and Theo played by Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg. These two have almost nothing to do except provide comic relief, and it’s jarring.
Perhaps someone somewhere was worried that the stellar leads might seem too sophisticated for a general audience. Or too prickly. Too British? It’s as if someone suggested tossing a couple of hilarious American comics into the mix as insurance. Ha, ha! But nobody told the writers.
The cast includes Sunita Mani and Zoe Chao, and Allison Janney has a cameo as a divorce lawyer.
The Roses is not a perfect movie, but it’s a delight to watch and to hear — who better than Colman and Cumberbatch to deliver razor-sharp barbs and delicious insults? And their characters are depicted as equals, their ongoing mutual attraction based on intellect and humour. That’s thrilling, actually.
The Roses. Directed by Jay Roach, written by Tony McNamara and based on the novel, The War of The Roses, by Warren Adler. Starring Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney, and Andy Samberg. In theatres August 29.