The Roses: Cumberbatch and Colman shine in a sharp, darkly comic take on marriage

There are two things everyone needs a bit of in life: romance and black comedy. Whether the two are a great combination, or one should lead into the other, is open to debate. 

New darkly comic film The Roses triggers this discussion, and honestly, by the end it’s unclear which side comes out on top in this wobbly marriage.

A loose adaptation of the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, and a remake of Danny DeVito’s 1989 film adaptation, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, The Roses follows Theo and Ivy Rose (played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman), a couple with two children and a decade’s worth of mutual, happy matrimony. 

Things start to unravel, though, as Theo’s career as an architect comes crashing down, while Ivy’s career as a chef starts heating up — prompting a domestic role reversal, and exposing the cracks in what many would declare an ideal coupling.

Very quickly, minor annoyances and microaggressions mutate into a series of unfortunate, distressing events as the Roses realise that 10 years of marriage has given way to vicious resentment. It’s a force aggravated by the attitudes of their friends, the failure of family and a mutually held belief that one would have been so much better off without the other.

As a black comedy, The Roses is frustratingly flawed. 

Whereas the original novel, and the 1989 film, focus on the nature of materialism and its impact on matrimonial bonds, the new film makes things a lot more personal. Theo and Ivy relish the material aspects of their lives, both in terms of their family and professions, but it’s their characters, their quirks, habits, and the emotions that propel them, that are the linchpins of this whole fiasco. 

And here’s where the primary flaw reveals itself. Doing a deeper character dive to mine the humour of a failing marriage is not impossible, but it is very difficult to reconcile that humour with the sincerity and drama you’ll unearth in the process. Ivy and Theo are by no means bad or irredeemable souls. The decade-long marriage and two children thing was working perfectly fine until now.

And so, when the film must rationalise what drove the two apart, it collides violently with the jokes that came before it, especially throughout the first half of the running time. 

And while the second half comes out swinging, where characters no longer have to hold back, it has trouble sticking the landing. Viewers are left unsure by the end how they should feel, and that’s not the sentiment you want walking out of a comedy.

What makes all this even more frustrating is that The Roses, when it’s being funny, is really really funny. 

Olivia Colman, in particular, reminds us that, despite what years of dramatic, human-centric performances have led us to believe, she is a comedic powerhouse. She nails her delivery every time. She does a fine job balancing the emotions she’s forced to scuttle through, and she’s a perfect foil for Cumberbatch’s Theo who is… respectfully pathetic, but nonetheless sympathetic. 

They are the ideal couple in that they are both masters at the art of quiet anger, fighting to not expose the unbridled contempt they have for themselves and everyone around them.

The Roses guarantees laughs thanks to the people both in front of the camera and behind it. 

The film is directed by Jay Roach, who brought us the Austin Powers trilogy, and its screenplay is written by Tony McNamara, who was responsible for Yorgos Lanthimos’ last two hits, Poor Things and the Colman-starring The Favorite. Roach knows how to stage a gag, while McNamara knows how to round them off, particularly for female characters, as evidenced by Colman both here and in her Lanthimos outing. 

The direction and writing are solid, but also saddled by the film’s tone problem, which is felt from start to finish.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cast varies from suitable to hysterical. Andy Samberg is one half of a couple that is honestly more spectacularly broken than the Roses, while Kate McKinnon is the other half and seemingly perpetually intoxicated (she has some of the best lines in The Roses, by the way). Alison Janney barely has a cameo, while Sunita Mani and Ncuti Gatwa, two employees at Ivy’s restaurant, are the only clear-minded folks in this whole mess, enabling them to fire off some really good zingers.

This said, The Roses is a timid recommendation. 

Trying to explore how a marriage can fall apart, humourising the circumstances that precede and follow its disintegration, doesn’t work well when it also must “get real” and have moments of genuine sincerity. 

The humour is sufficient for it to scrape by, especially thanks to some ensemble scenes that reflect how its parts are greater than its whole. 

It’s unfortunate that one is left wishing it would commit more to its absurdity. In that sense it’s a film with commitment issues, and there’s irony in there somewhere. DM

The Roses is in cinemas from 29 August 2025. This story was first published on Pfangirl.