‘The Roses’ Review: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman in Wedded War

Much is made in The Roses of the electricity generated between a couple by the caustic British barbs they exchange, something that comes out as blunt ridicule when a Californian friend tries it on her partner. You couldn’t ask for a more skilled demonstration of how it should be done than the deliciously withering repartee lobbed back and forth by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as Theo and Ivy Rose, whose union spirals from bliss into mutual destruction in this dark comedy about marital collapse. The lead actors’ combative chemistry is what keeps Jay Roach’s overcrowded remake zingy even when it threatens to turn from savage to sour.

To be clear, Roach has described the glossy, pleasurable film as more of a reimagining than a remake, given that screenwriter Tony McNamara drew less from the beloved 1989 screen version, The War of the Roses, than from Warren Adler’s source novel of the same name.

The Roses indeed has a significantly different feel thanks to its setting, leading players and the script’s injection of thorny gender dynamics when partners find their career paths on opposite trajectories. Is it funnier? Mostly no, though Cumberbatch and Colman put their own vinegary spin on McNamara’s tasty dialogue, which, as anyone who has seen The Favourite, Poor Things or Hulu’s The Great might guess, is laced with spectacular flights of profanity. Colman drops the C-word with incomparable aplomb.

The team of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and director/co-star Danny DeVito already had Romancing the Stone and its sequel The Jewel of the Nile under their belts when they made the 1989 movie, so there were built-in layers of tantalizing shared history to feed both the shocks and the laughs of watching Oliver and Barbara Rose, as they were named in the first adaptation, rip each other to shreds. Turner in particular was a ferocious tornado, playing an unfulfilled woman spewing out blistering contempt for her husband.

Roach’s film starts on that note of scorn during a hilarious session of couples therapy, in which an assigned list of 10 things Theo and Ivy like about each other reveals the poisonous extent of their mutual loathing. The funniest part of the scene is the nervous reaction of their American therapist, who throws her hands up in defeat and says their relationship cannot be saved. The Roses’ amusement at that surrender gives them a brief détente, slyly skewering the British-American cultural divide while hinting at how essential their simpatico sense of humor has been to their marriage at both its best and its worst.

The action rewinds to “where it all began” in London, as accomplished architect Theo extracts himself from a self-congratulatory lunch meeting to hide out in the restaurant kitchen, where Ivy is fileting salmon. Soon, they are having boisterous sex in the cool room. Ivy is planning to move to the U.S. to pursue her dream of becoming a chef, so Theo impulsively commits to go with her, and the perfectly synched rapport between Cumberbatch and Colman makes you buy it.

Cut to ten years later, when they are married and living in Mendocino, California, with their two kids, Hattie (played by Delaney Quinn as a preteen and Hala Finley at 13) and Roy (Ollie Robinson and Wells Rappaport). Ivy’s ambitions appear to have hit a wall so she keeps busy by creating elaborate desserts for the children. But Theo is flying high; preparations are underway for the opening of a maritime museum he designed with a sculptural rooftop sail reflecting the ship inspiration.

To celebrate his success with the lucrative commission, Theo buys Ivy a modest restaurant to keep her dreams alive. But the loving couple’s equilibrium hits a major bump when a freak coastal storm destroys Theo’s new building before its inauguration and viral videos compound his humiliation. Overnight, he becomes unemployable. At the same time, Ivy’s seafood joint, cheekily named We’ve Got Crabs, takes off when she gets a rave review from a food critic stranded by the storm.

Handling the hiccup in a way that any smart, mutually supportive couple might, Ivy suggests it’s her turn to be the principal earner while Theo gets to stay home and look after the kids. But he’s consumed by anger over the museum debacle and its fallout, crushing his self-worth and making a mockery of the male ambition wired into his DNA. He responds by drilling Hattie and Roy with an almost military fitness regimen, which before long makes them state athletics champions.

Ivy’s restaurant business becomes a raging success, with three locations and a string of awards, profile pieces and photo shoots. She enjoys the work too much to agree when Theo suggests they revert to their original roles while he takes a lower-level job at a new firm. But recognizing that Theo needs to fill the void, Ivy buys a block of land in a gorgeous coastal position, bankrolling his design and construction of their dream house. (Stunning locations in the South Devon town of Salcombe stand in for California.)

Resentment soon starts needling away at them as Theo goes over budget and Ivy feels her role as a mother has been usurped — the kids are now too health-conscious even to touch her desserts. Tension between them worsens when Hattie and Roy go away on a sports scholarship to an elite academy in Miami. Theo and Ivy’s friends spot trouble in the marriage before they do, but it all comes to the surface during an uncomfortable dinner party to celebrate completion of the dazzling new house. (The airy, light-flooded structure isn’t exactly conducive to dark comedy, but it’s primo real-estate porn.)

One of the flaws of McNamara’s script — and Roach’s ability to extract maximum value from a sizable ensemble — is the role of those friends, despite four of them being a schematic representation of other mismatched couples who perhaps have less reason to be together than Theo and Ivy. There are just too many supporting characters for them all to be of use.

Theo’s friend and lawyer Barry (Andy Samberg) and his libidinously raunchy wife Amy (Kate McKinnon) make sense even if McKinnon seems to be in a wacky comedy of a different kind. But a second couple, Sally (Zoë Chao) and Rory (Jamie Demetriou), while amusing presences, seem to exist solely to dispense quips and occupy seats at the table. The same goes for Ivy’s front-of-house manager Jeffrey (Ncuti Gatwa) and sous chef Jane (Sunita Mani), who have been with her since her humble crab-shack beginnings.

All six of these characters are played by gifted comic actors, but they are given too little to do and are too poorly developed to have much consistency. Barry gives Theo and Ivy a handsome pistol as he introduces them to the pleasures of the shooting range where he and Amy and Rory and Sally are regulars. But nothing about any of these four characters tracks with them being gun enthusiasts. The scene exists merely to facilitate the “Chekhov’s gun” principal, just like Ivy’s life-threatening allergy to raspberries.

The standout supporting performance comes from Allison Janney in a single firecracker scene as Ivy’s tough-talking shark of a divorce lawyer. She also prods Samberg to elevate his game, giving him someone to play off rather than just hanging around on the periphery.

Even if Roach doesn’t always bring the lightest of touches, the movie works best when it stays tightly focused on Theo and Ivy, building powder-keg tension as divorce negotiations become more contentious and hostilities more pronounced. Naturally, each of them goes after something precious to the other — the house to Theo and her business to Ivy. The sabotage and destruction are considerable, and yes, there’s a version of a chandelier involved.

Like Douglas and Turner in The War of the Roses, it’s refreshing that Ivy is the fiercest of the two, reluctant to acknowledge their past happiness, whereas Theo can’t erase memories of what made them fall in love.

Australian screenwriter McNamara’s comic sensibilities are more in line with English than American humor — which brings the plus of scathing wit, if also the minus of a certain decorum even in outbursts of indecorous fury. But whatever the tradeoffs, Cumberbatch and Colman are terrific precisely because they can eviscerate each other while never losing sight of how deeply compatible they are as a couple — hateful cruelty notwithstanding.