Verdict: Deliciously wicked
Back in the Eighties, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were the rich divorcing couple fighting tooth and nail for spoils in Danny DeVito’s dark comedy The War Of The Roses.
Famous for its escalating cruelty, from a memorable dinner party sabotage (where Douglas’s character wees on his wife’s signature dish) to suggestions of pet murder, it left a bitter taste compared to this jollier update starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman.
Based, like the original, on the novel by Warren Adler, it sees two Brits – a successful architect called Theo (Cumberbatch) and a rising chef called Ivy (Colman) – fall in love at first sight.
They move to California for Theo’s work, and Ivy puts her foodie dreams on hold while raising their kids, until events take a turn.
As Ivy’s career goes stratospheric, leaving Theo a stay-at-home dad, their relationship drifts, ever further, into the danger zone until even their couples’ therapist concludes: ‘I don’t think you have the capacity to fix your problems.’
‘Are you actually allowed to say that?!’ goggles Theo.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman star in The Roses, a hugely enjoyable remake of 1989 classic war Of The Roses
Back in the Eighties, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were the rich divorcing couple fighting tooth and nail for spoils in Danny DeVito’s dark comedy The War Of The Roses
If you’ve ever cheerfully wished your partner dead (just for a moment) or cursed them as they ponced off to a swanky work do leaving you to clear up the cat sick and hang the laundry, then this is the movie for you.
Updated for modern times, it’s a 2025 battle of the sexes rooted in the relatable domestic realities and stresses that exhaust working parents.
It’s also outrageously funny – as you’d imagine from the director of Austin Powers and Meet The Parents, Jay Roach, and the writer of Poor Things, Tony McNamara.
The script zings with one-liners, replacing the original movie’s slapstick carnage (though there are still dashes of that) with devilishly biting wit. None of that would work, though, without two acting geniuses delivering it.
Casting director Nina Gold deserves to win an Oscar for matchmaking Colman and Cumberbatch – the perfect on-screen couple you never saw coming. Both are on tip-top form here, which is saying a lot.
The comedy tone is cartoon maximalist, but Cumberbatch and Colman deliver with such impeccable timing and nuance that you never doubt the truism that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. The Roses are far from indifferent.
Elsewhere, Kate McKinnon is hilarious, if repetitive, as lustful friend Amy, who’s married to Andy Samberg’s Barry; and you only wish you could see rather more of Allison Janney, as a Rottweiler divorce lawyer, and Ncuti Gatwa as Ivy’s gay work colleague and confidant.
Allowing the Roses’ marital resentments to slowly simmer into sniping before exploding into all-out warfare makes the climax all the more delicious. At least to our British palates.
As Theo drily shoots back when his Californian therapist is shocked by the couple’s ‘verbal cruelty’: ‘In England we call that repartee.’
Casting director Nina Gold deserves to win an Oscar for matchmaking Colman and Cumberbatch – the perfect on-screen couple you never saw coming
Updated for modern times, it’s a 2025 battle of the sexes rooted in the relatable domestic realities and stresses that exhaust working parents