The 36th wedding anniversary is called “The bone-china anniversary,” and no, I’m not just “having a laugh” as the Brits say. I looked it up.
That’s not a very flattering label to slap on “The Roses,” a remake of “The War of the Roses,” the Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito (he also directed) dark romp of 1989. But while 36 years might be enough time to forget the original film of Warren Adler’s “breaking up is deadly” comedy, that’ll have to do for this Anglicized, snippy and updated if unimproved riff on the state of marriage.
Pairing up Oscar winner Olivia Colman with Benedict Cumberbatch cannot help but play as a more genteel and reserved take on the birth, flourishing then withering death of a marriage, with even the nastiest, f-bombed and c-worded cutting remark dismissed to friends with “In England we call that repartee.”
That just screams “bone china anniversary,” doesn’t it? And yes, it’s funny to hear how foul-mouthed this posh pair can be. “The Roses,” or “War of the Roses,” this still plays.
She’s Ivy, a chef who puts aside her ambitions to join pretentious but witty architect Theo (Cumberbatch) when he flees the stolid UK for America, where his “fun” and “whimsical” designs can become buildings.
His success means that they can move to Mendocino, raise two kids and he can gift her with a modest beachside eatery to indulge in her dream — to serve creative cuisine to “20 covers” (tables booked) a week, just as a part-time thing.
But one “freak storm” exposes the fragility of his most “whimsical” design yet — a maritime museum built to look like a sailing ship, complete with metallic sails. That’s the night roads close and legions of customers, including a prominent food critic, flood the cafe the potty-mouthed Ivy named “We’ve Got Crabs.”
In that one night, Theo is ruined and reduced to an “It won’t fall down!” meme, and Ivy is elevated to Foodie Goddess. He is unemployable, so he becomes the focused and physical-fitness obsessed caregiver to Hattie (Delaney Quinn) and Roy (Ollie Robinson), children now destined to over-achieve and lose track of their working-her-way-to-the-top mother.
With every new restaurant, every new blast of publicity, every child achievement, the re-balanced nature of the marriage becomes further imbalanced. And their friends (Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg) can’t help but notice.
“Is everything OK?”
The director of “Austin Powers” the screenwriter of “Poor Things” and “The Favourite” don’t need to “update” the Adler novel and 1989 film of it, as the wife’s profession — cooking (catering in ’89, star chef in 2025) — is even more trendy today.
But they did, changing the husband into an architect rather than a lawyer and altering the “trigger” for their divorce from a heart attack, materialism and self-absorption to self-pity and a disconnect in parenting styles.
The focus on a legal war that escalates into a blood feud makes for some amusingly nasty moments — she’s got a raspberry allergy that he manipulates, he’s vulnerable to a “deep fake” video that will finish him off as an architect — but rather loses the heart of the story.
The kids play a bigger role, but not in any way that restores that missing “heart.” We’re meant to laugh at the two-fisted break-up but mourn for what they’re abandoning. We don’t this time.
But Cumberbatch is in a fine, reserved fury and Colman goes over-the-top (Remember her Queen in “The Favourite?”) who has “lost your feelings on the cliff of resentment.”
That English reserve minimizing a crisis as a “bump in the road,” “the hard part” of a marriage,” is only amusing up to a point.
McKinnon, playing a predatory man-eater looking to turn their disentegrating union into a fling with Theo, is hilarious in support. She’d have been funnier pursuing BOTH Theo and Ivy (hinted at, but not developed). Samberg’s part is underwritten and was a lot funnier when played by DeVito back in the ’80s.
A dinner party that goes wrong in the gorgeous and pricy seaside mansion Theo designed for them allows Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou, playing fellow architects, to steal a scene.
And the “war” itself is still funny, with lead performances that invite you to revel in their Britishness in the face of escalating conflict, thanks to her insanely insulting lawyer (Oscar winner Allison Janney, chewing it up), fun with firearms and Epipens and all that. But this “Roses” is shorter, more about the lead-up to the “war” than the conflict itself, somehow managing to lose some of the heart of the story in the process.
It’s still nasty fun, just not as nasty and acridly funny as that ’80s comic trio of Turner, Douglas and DeVito were able to make it.
Rating: R, violence, drugs, sexual come-ons, profanity
Cast: Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg, Sunita Mani, Ncuti Gatwa, Zoë Chao, Jamie Demetriou and Allison Janney.
Credits: Directed by Jay Roach, scripted by Tony McNamara, based on the novel by Warren Adler. A Searchlight release.
Running time: 1:45
Movie Nation 