5.6

Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman Trade Barbs in The Roses, But its Thorns Aren’t Sharp Enough

By Jesse Hassenger  |  August 28, 2025 | 9:43am
Movies Reviews Jay Roach
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman Trade Barbs in The Roses, But its Thorns Aren’t Sharp Enough

One thing the slick and deceptively tidy marriage comedy The Roses gets right is the seductive, sometimes toxic power of a relationship forged on mutual witticisms and clever banter. This is the lifeblood of the classic romantic comedy, and the movie understands the allure; how could it not, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman wrapping their precise diction around playful put-downs and a dash of self-deprecation while staring, rapt, into each other’s eyes? Theo (Cumberbatch), an architect, and Ivy (Ivy), a chef, meet by chance and bond over their caustic assessment of those who don’t appreciate their respective crafts. The movie jumps ahead to their married-with-two-kids life in California, where Theo has found greater success as an architect, and is able to help bankroll a cute little seafood restaurant for Ivy to run, so she can follow her creative whims more readily than in her pastry-chef gig.

But when their fortunes shift and Ivy suddenly becomes the dominant family breadwinner, their relationship changes, too. The barbs once aimed at the outside world and perhaps only occasionally, almost flirtily at each other start to sting a bit more. Resentments and selfishness break through the surface, no longer fully disguised by the couple’s mutual cleverness and former willingness to admit when they were behaving unreasonably.

If you’ve seen the 1989 film The War of the Roses or read the novel that film and this one are both based upon, you may be wondering when divorce enters into it. In adapting the material for 2025, screenwriter Tony McNamara and director Jay Roach spend more time exploring the shifting dynamics of the Rose marriage, rather than romping through the smoldering wreckage. The duel that escalates once the characters decide to formally split up – complete with ruthless attorney Eleanor (Allison Janney), pitted against the couple’s significantly less ruthless friend Barry (Andy Samberg) – is third-act stuff, delivered largely in montage. Much of the movie focuses more on characters attempting to be nice to each other and failing, rather than the brutal one-upmanship the ’89 film is known for.

Theoretically, this is a smart decision that differentiates The Roses from its predecessor (along with the casting of Cumberbatch and Colman over the decidedly differently vibed Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner), updates it for a time when an upper-class wife and mother would not be as expected to devote as much of her time solely to child-rearing, and allows the movie to dig further into the characters’ psychology. In practice, spending so much time dissecting the particulars of the Roses marriage as they develop, rather than through their recriminations and litigations, makes The Roses feel rather like a prequel – a black comedy’s origin story, rather than the dark stuff itself.

There are laughs in the movie, to be sure. But it’s notable just how many of them come from McNamara’s witty dialogue as expertly delivered by Cumberbatch and Colman, and how few of them accompany the movie’s attempts at shticky running gags, involving a viral video of Theo’s professional humiliation, or the strange behavior of Barry’s wife Amy (Kate McKinnon). If you can believe it, McKinnon plays a lady who says and does a bunch of random incoherent stuff! The “and” credit has never so clearly telegraphed what a character’s whole deal was going to be.

In spirit, the sillier moments hew closer to Roach’s other broad comedies – he made the Austin Powers movies and the first two Meet the Parents films, as well as the disappointingly toothless Dinner for Schmucks – and occasionally touch upon a bit of the culture-clash sensibility of those movies, like the Roses bonding over their mutual surprise and dismay when their American friends bring them to a gun range. But several major plot points seem caught in between hoary running gags and questionable emotional resonance, particularly a bit about the Roses’ son and daughter. When Ivy’s restaurant becomes a sensation, Theo takes over a lot of parenting duties, and uses the opportunity to steer his children toward intense physical fitness, in part as a quiet rebellion against Ivys more chef-like appreciation of culinary indulgences. Their athleticism becomes a running gag, as well as a bone of contention for Ivy, who comes to feel that the kids are monomaniacally obsessed with it, to the point of them departing for a vaguely defined scholarship across the country, before they’re even college-aged.

Is this supposed to be funny or sad? Kind of both, I guess, but neither really lands; everything involving the kids falls flat, starting from the fact that Theo’s supposedly taxing parenting duties arrive at a time when his children are far from helpless; he’s not exactly run ragged by a pair of infants. Though the movie does pointedly reserve the worst of the Roses’ conflicts for after they seem to both have everything they should want or need, there’s some glibness there, too; no, money can’t automatically buy happiness, but boy, these characters sure don’t have much experience without it for comparison’s sake.

It’s just one more way of flattening out a supposedly tense movie. Much of The Roses languishes in second gear, with glints of amusement (Colman doing an Ian McKellan impression; the Englishness of punctuating or preceding insults with “darling”) that only accumulate in a way that makes the movie feel a little safe, compared to the genuine rancor and bitterness of the earlier film. The newer version is probably a more fleshed-out and evenhanded portrait of a marriage. To what end, though? Mostly just a punchline that you may have heard before.

Director: Jay Roach
Writer: Tony McNamara
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Sunita Mani, Allison Janney
Release Date: August 29, 2025

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.

 
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