The Roses (2025)

User Review

• 

  ScreenZealots

  2 / 10

  Despite its prestige casting and literary pedigree, director Jay Roach‘s “The Roses” is a tough one to sit through. On paper, the prospect of seeing two terrific actors (Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch) tear into each other in a dark marital comedy sounds like a gift. While their chemistry is undeniable, the movie around them is more exhausting than entertaining.
  
  Based on Warren Adler’s novel “The War of the Roses” (which was previously adapted for the screen in 1989), the film follows Ivy (Colman) and Theo (Cumberbatch), a seemingly perfect couple with enviable careers, children, and a glossy suburban life. But when Theo’s professional dreams implode just as Ivy’s ambitions take flight, old resentments boil to the surface. The seemingly happy pair begin waging psychological and physical warfare against each other. What starts as sniping escalates to petty sabotage, cruel games, and eventually, outright life-threatening behavior.
  
  The problem is that Roach doesn’t quite find the balance between venom and wit. The first hour is glacial, laboring to establish Ivy and Theo’s supposedly idyllic life before letting it unravel. Once the “war” does finally break out, it feels rushed, like we’re getting the Cliffs Notes version of the real descent into madness. The pathetic attempts at humor also rarely land. What should be biting satire instead comes across as awkwardly unfunny, and the cruelty at the heart of the film isn’t laced with enough sharpness to make the ugliness palatable.
  
  Cumberbatch and Colman do their best to wring nuance from the material, and there are moments where you can glimpse the movie this could have been: a razor-edged battle of wills between two brilliant performers. But too often, the film mistakes misery for entertainment. Watching a marriage collapse can be compelling when it’s illuminated with insight or wit but here, it’s just bleak. This movie actually made me feel bad while watching it.
  
  In the end, “The Roses” is less a cautionary tale about miscommunication and resentment than a test of the audience’s endurance.
  
  By: Louisa Moore / SCREEN ZEALOTS

  Like?

  0 member like this review.