The marriage between a pair of British expats in California comes to a bitter end in The Roses, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. This new adaptation of Warren Adler‘s novel The War of the Roses, which was previously turned into a well-remembered 1989 film starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, boasts a pair of engaging lead performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman along with terrific production design and location cinematography… but scuttles by on low energy for the duration, and lacks the romantic intensity that would truly invest us in its central relationship.
Directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents) from a screenplay by Tony McNamara, The Roses stars Cumberbatch as self-absorbed architect Theo Rose, who is frustrated with the direction of his latest UK project at the film’s outset. In an engaging meet-cute, he escapes into the kitchen of a high-end restaurant to meet chef Ivy (Colman), who expresses a similar level of dissatisfaction with her career—as well as plans to make it on her own in San Francisco.
Flash-forward a decade, and Theo and Ivy are happily married and living with a pair of kids in Southern California; his design for a sprawling new maritime museum in the shape of a ship is about to open to the public, while she runs a modest seafood restaurant on the coast, open just a few nights a week. Theo’s dreams come (literally) crashing down during an especially stormy night, which proves a boon for Ivy when a prominent food critic takes shelter in her establishment.
Three years later, and Ivy’s once-sleepy restaurant has now become a successful franchise, while Theo—embracing professional sacrifice—has taken over care of the kids, turning them from sugar-craving addicts into health-focused athletes who win a scholarship to a prestigious Miami school. With Ivy’s success, everything seems to be good in their world, and she even spurs him on a dream project: to design and build a sprawling mansion overlooking the California coast.
Through 75 minutes, The Roses is what its title (shorn of the ‘war’ of its source novel) implies: sure, there’s some lighthearted bickering between Theo and Ivy, and even that trademark British sarcasm, delivered with such gusto by Cumberbatch and Colman that it implores their American friends to awkwardly mimic them. But there’s no war here: despite the failure of a marriage counselor to offer any assistance, we get the impression that these characters should be able to work things out.
The Roses is mostly a lighthearted, sometimes touching account of how these two people with narcissistic tendencies attempt to balance their personal and professional lives, and the sacrifices they make in the name of family. The leads are a lot of fun to watch, and almost always front-and-center: their dry brand of caustic humor consistently gets more laughs than the characters intended to provide comic support, including friends played by Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, and Zoë Chao (Allison Janney, however, steals her single scene as a high-powered divorce lawyer with a Rottweiler).
But instead of allowing this story to come to a natural conclusion, the movie suddenly realizes that it’s supposed to be something like Danny DeVito‘s The War of the Roses, and has its characters at each other’s throats for an over-the-top third act that betrays the understated narrative that has preceded it. Now, there is finally a war: but it all unfolds in half-hearted comedic montage, and never has the dark bite of the earlier movie—until a final scene that returns the focus to the central relationship.
Cumberbatch and Colman are excellent here, but we never really believe that their characters would devolve into the kind of violence—driven by a fiery romantic connection—that ignited the earlier film. These are reasonable people, and would almost certainly reach an amicable resolution, as melancholic as it might make them feel.
While the first two-thirds of The Roses represent the film at its most effective, the story only ever comes to a mild simmer and never really gets going. It’s pleasant, sometimes amusing, but rarely gripping. What does consistently impress is the look of the movie: the striking design of the sprawling coastal mansion at the story’s center, along with sweeping views of the California shoreline, give the production a polish beyond the usual romantic comedy.
In the end, The Roses is a handsome and well-acted reimagining of Adler’s novel bolstered by a pair of strong performances, but one that never fully commits to either domestic drama or dark comedy. It lingers in the middle, a gently diverting marital tale that struggles to justify the return to familiar material, and feels especially weak when stacked up against memories of the earlier film.
