The Roses (15)

Boorish architect Theo Rose is the main breadwinner for his family while wife Ivy cares for their two children and cooks three days a week at a small beachside eaterie. A disastrous launch for a maritime museum, designed to Theo's daring specifications, coincides with a stellar five-star review for Ivy's kitchen wizardry from a revered San Francisco food critic. As Theo's fortunes tumble and he becomes an embittered stay-at-home father, Ivy is propelled into the media spotlight.

LondonNet Film Review

The Roses (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Feuding spouses vent frustrations to destructive extremes in a potty-mouthed comedy directed by Meet The Parents maestro Jay Roach, adapted by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tony McNamara from Warren Adler’s book. The War Of The Roses was previously filmed with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the materialistic husband and wife, who allow simmering resentment to boil over with shocking consequences (at one point, he urinates on the fish course of her important client dinner)…

The Roses burnishes Adler’s text, originally published in the early 1980s, to reflect civil war between an architect and a chef in the oceanside community of Mendocino, California, where you could comfortably “float a boat on the undercurrent of discontent”. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman toss verbal grenades as their characters’ onscreen marriage disintegrates and openly shed tears as the enormity of love lost hits home with shuddering force between the mean-spirited insults.

A delicate balance of tonal flavours jars with the broad comedy of Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon’s best friends, who play like a Saturday Night Live sketch. The latter is armed with the film’s sharpest one-liner, though, openly admiring Cumberbatch’s flame-scorched phoenix rising from the smouldering ashes of his dumpster fire marriage: “I never thought watching a white man reclaim his power could be so moving!” Ncuti Gatwa enjoys limited screen time as a head restaurant server, who takes that title very seriously when it comes to “servicing” male truckers in the car park, while Allison Janney bulldozes her five-minute interlude as a no-nonsense divorce attorney replete with canine sidekick.

Boorish architect Theo (Cumberbatch) is the main breadwinner for his family while wife Ivy cares for their two children, Hattie (Delaney Quinn) and Roy (Ollie Robinson), and cooks three days a week at a small beachside eaterie, playfully christened We’ve Got Crabs. A disastrous launch for a maritime museum, designed to Theo’s daring specifications, coincides with a stellar five-star review for Ivy’s kitchen wizardry from a revered San Francisco food critic. “Maybe I have been resisting my genius for too long,” she chirps.

As Theo’s fortunes tumble and he becomes an embittered stay-at-home father, Ivy is propelled into the media spotlight. Partnered friends Barry (Samberg) and Amy (McKinnon) and Rory (Jamie Demetriou) and Sally (Zoe Chao) are caught in the crossfire as Ivy and Theo acknowledge mutual dizzying hatred.

The Roses is a smart and occasionally savage portrait of clashing egos and reversed traditional gender roles that slow-cooks the tasty main ingredients: Colman and Cumberbatch. They are a heavenly (and hilariously hellish) pairing, from lustful first glances across a restaurant kitchen to an explosive showdown with bullets and airborne citrus fruit. Screenwriter McNamara, who previously worked with Colman on The Favourite, demonstrates a sharp ear for dialogue that inflicts cumulative pain like hundreds of tiny paper cuts.

– Jo Planter