movie review
THE ROSES
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (drugs, sexual content, and language throughout). In theaters.
Bickering couples can be delicious to watch.
Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh’s Beatrice and Benedick lit a sexy match in “Much Ado About Nothing.” And Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton boozily ripped each other to pieces in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
And then there’s Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman’s “till death do us part” duo in “The Roses.” Many, many rungs down from their predecessors, this domestic blitz is weak and witless.
The crabby characters are an unappetizing and cringey pair that would push a person to find any excuse to sprint out of an awkward dinner party — or, I wish, an eerily silent movie theater — at the earliest possible convenience.
Actually, the basic premise of director Jay Roach’s film, based on the novel “The War of the Roses,” is sadistic good fun. Partners’ contempt turns deadly. And why not? Another 1989 screen version starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas is well-liked, if not a classic.
This inferior one — more Nancy Meyers’ Golden State real-estate porn than scorching black comedy — isn’t smart, tense or fiery enough to render bad behavior into punchy entertainment. The movie is spicy as corn chowder.
Our terrible two are Theo (Cumberbatch), a renowned architect, and Ivy (Colman), a cook who abandoned a professional kitchen in London for the Fruit Loops of motherhood.
When Theo’s ambitious new California building embarrassingly collapses during a powerful storm, so does his career. On the same fateful night, Ivy’s sparsely attended hobby restaurant, gratingly called We’ve Got Crabs, gets a rave review from a prominent food critic, and business explodes.
Roles suddenly reversed, so too does their resentment.
Colman and Cumberbatch’s appealing energy is always a pleasure — and clearly the draw here — but I didn’t enjoy spending my night with the sourpusses it’s wasted on.
Ivy and Theo get no help from Tony McNamara’s limp and glossy script. They’re unfunny and unnatural. And, as he poisons her food and she sends damaging fake texts to his co-workers, their anger doesn’t crescendo to catastrophe. My brows raised all the way to the thermosphere as they unconvincingly tried to kill each other with a gun and a chef’s knife.
Cruelty would seem to be these freaks’ kink. Another impossible plot has Ivy repeatedly test Theo by risking her life. Deathly allergic to raspberries, she scarfs down a mouthful and sees how long it takes her hubby to stick her with an EpiPen. That thoughtless inanity lost me early on.
Chemistry is a problem, too, because there isn’t any. Rarely did I buy these actors as legit spouses, contented or miserable. The gag of their two kids as overly formal Von Trapps doesn’t work. And their escalating fight, because of the tonally confused writing and direction, earns a big “yeah, right!”
As the battle becomes over the ownership of a stun-o-rama oceanside house Theo designed — see: Nancy Meyers — Allison Janney stomps in as an over-the-top divorce lawyer, and Kate McKinnon’s brusque Amy unsubtly tries to get in Theo’s pants. “The Roses” does not lack ineffective broad humor.
Only strong writing and meaty parts.
Cumberbatch, an actor who always looks like he’s just smelled something funny, is fine. Consistently perturbed, he’s Basil Fawlty after a lot of Tylenol PM.
Colman is better, but in service of what, exactly?
Since winning the Oscar for “The Favourite” in 2019, Colman’s record has been spotty. Her awards contenders haven’t contended, and her crowd-pleasers have been few and far between.
She is an exceptional actress. But, for her, “The Roses” is another thorn.
