THE STORY – Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Theo and Ivy: Successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids. However, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentments soon emerges when Theo’s career nosedives and Ivy’s own ambitions take off.
THE CAST – Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoë Chao, Jamie Demetriou, Ncuti Gatwa, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg & Allison Janney
THE TEAM – Jay Roach (Director) & Tony McNamara (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
We’re constantly told to “stop and smell the roses.” Whenever life gets tough, we’re told to take a moment to look around and appreciate the beauty around us. It’s seemingly how Theo and Ivy Rose make their marriage work. Whenever the high-strung architect Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the easygoing chef Ivy (Olivia Colman) disagree, one of them pauses, takes it all in, realizes how silly all their fighting is, and admits they’re being an ass. If the secret to a happy marriage truly is never going to bed angry, then the Roses are proof positive.
The two met in their native England when they were young professionals eager to strike out on their own and unleash their big ideas. Ivy has already decided that she’s moving to America, and Theo proposes that he go with her even though, as she points out, they haven’t even had sex yet. One quick trip to the walk-in fridge fixes that, though, and soon enough they’re living the American dream in the Bay Area: A house, two kids, a thriving business for Theo, and years of putting other moms to shame at school bake sales for Ivy. When a massive storm reverses their professional fortunes overnight, Ivy starts spending more time building a restaurant empire, and Theo takes over raising their kids. While they make it work at first, resentment between the two starts to brew, eventually boiling over to the point that divorce seems inevitable. Will Ivy and Theo burn it all down, or will they find a way back into each other’s arms?
Tony McNamara’s marvelous adaptation of Warren Adler’s 1981 novel “The War of the Roses” (and Danny DeVito’s 1988 film adaptation) retains all the bitter nastiness of the original text while seamlessly bringing it into the 2020s. Divorce hasn’t changed much in the four decades since the novel’s original publication; if anything, people have only gotten more selfish and vicious in the intervening years, despite all the “conscious uncoupling” and increasing availability of relationship counseling. The culture at large has become increasingly nasty in recent years, making it easier for McNamara to portray the escalating war between the Roses as less over-the-top than it was in the ’80s. Then again, maybe that’s just the posh British accents fooling us Americans into thinking the trashy is actually classy.
Under the direction of Jay Roach, “The Roses” is as broad as entertainment gets – the punchlines are big, the pratfalls are bigger, and every single adult cast member is trying to outdo each other on the scenery-chewing front. And yet, with the estimable Colman and Cumberbatch lending their honeyed voices to the dialogue of McNamara’s patented poison pen, “The Roses” mostly finds an agreeable balance between frothy fun and stinging social commentary.
Even with McNamara’s thoughtful plotting and gradual escalation of emotions, the roles of Ivy and Theo require performers who have a complete lack of vanity as well as the ability to go big without becoming a caricature. Colman and Cumberbatch are perfect for the job; as adept with comedy as they are with drama, both performers possess a facility with dialogue that allows them to turn on a dime between different emotional registers, an invaluable skill for navigating the hairpin turns of McNamara’s scrumptious script. Colman, in particular, goes a bit overboard with Ivy’s sweetness, adding so much sugar that some line readings can leave a suspicious aftertaste. Without such insistence on Ivy’s puppy love for Theo, though, her staying with him as long as she does would push disbelief past the breaking point.
Cumberbatch makes Theo as charming as possible, but he embodies Theo’s tightly wound, Type A personality a bit too well, remaining smart enough to recognize his shortcomings but egocentric enough to fall victim to them at every turn. Cumberbatch’s self-loathing as Theo is so palpable that he proves unable to stop himself, making it harder to sympathize with him as the film goes on. That’s part of the film’s design, though, as Ivy likewise falls victim to her own ego in ways that make it difficult to sympathize with her. But the British thespians find nuance in every line, showcasing the deep hurt that causes them to lash out with such vulgar verbal gymnastics. While everything is in the script, it’s really because of Colman and Cumberbatch that it’s so difficult to take sides in this war of the Roses; even the nastiest, most over-the-top things they say and do to each other (the climactic dinner party sequence is fantastically filthy fun) always come from an emotional place that makes sense.
The ensemble surrounding the two Roses could afford to dial themselves back a bit. Still, those characters are one-note by nature, and they’re played as such by performers with big personalities, hired specifically for the energy they bring to every project. If it feels like Zoë Chao, Jamie Demetriou, Kate McKinnon, and Andy Samberg are all playing to the back row, then that’s only because they each have such an easily identifiable screen presence that their performances feel big even when they’re working in a more grounded register. Only Allison Janney manages to rise above, as she seemingly always does, stealing the whole movie in her one scene as Ivy’s no-nonsense pitbull of a divorce attorney. Her line readings are so sharp they could draw blood.
If McNamara’s delicious dialogue is the real star of the show here, then at least Roach stays out of the screenplay’s way, guiding the ensemble with an invisible hand through its tricky tonal shifts. Roach’s bland, shot/reverse shot direction and dislike of subtlety certainly don’t elevate the film. However, embracing the entertainment factor of the script’s nastiness while ensuring the film doesn’t come across as cold is more difficult than Roach makes it look. While one could wish for some more visual flair, it’s hard not to enjoy what Roach gives us, as “The Roses” still offers plenty of bang for your buck with its smart, side-splitting screenplay and magnificent central performances.
