Mixed “The Roses” Showcases Stars

The Roses (Jay Roach, 2025) 3 out of 5 stars

The late writer Warren Adler published his novel The War of the Roses in 1981. Danny DeVito directed an adaptation of it in 1989, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, with a script by Michael Leeson (The Survivors). 36 years later, Jay Roach (Bombshell) delivers another version, The Roses, from a script by Tony McNamara (Poor Things), starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. It succeeds more than its predecessor (which I do not like) but never rises much above the passably entertaining.

Fortunately, both Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) and Colman (Paddington in Peru) are worth the watch. As Theo and Ivy Rose, they transform scenes that would otherwise fall flat into masterclasses on performance. And so, uneven and meandering as the movie may sometimes be, they consistently make it fairly decent fun.

It begins with the trading of insults, offering a taste of what is to come, as Ivy and Theo roast each other in a therapist’s office. Afterwards, they walk away, bursting into laughter from their shenanigans. Did they mean any of it? Perhaps more than they realize …

Flash back 10 years to how they met in London, and one steamy sex scene later takes us to Mendocino, California, where the happy couple lives quite well thanks to Theo’s successful career as an architect. Ivy is talented, too—as a chef—though her skills remain mostly unappreciated by the outside world, even as her husband and two kids adore her and her recipes.

It will take a major reversal of circumstances—courtesy of a freak storm—for this happy idyll to come undone. Even then, the change is not immediate. First, each spouse needs time to allow simmering resentments to come to a boil. Once they do, the gloves come off, revealing some very sharp claws underneath.

The comedy often lands in successful fashion, though there is a little too much randomness thanks to scenes featuring the likes of Kate McKinnon (The Spy Who Dumped Me) and Andy Samberg (Lee), among others. Talented as they may be (and they are), too many of their jokes feel tacked on as filler. We chuckle, but the humor feels a bit empty.

There’s also a problem with the central conceit of the piece: the nature of parenting (part of what ultimately drives the couple apart). At the time of the source novel, the dynamic perhaps made more sense, but in 2025, the division of labor within the marriage feels anachronistic; add to that an underlying nastiness falling more on one party than the other, which tips the narrative balance away from a bothsidesism that otherwise drives the drama. How you see it may depend on you, but what is not in doubt is that the two stars shine throughout.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.