“Roses” begins in a marriage therapist’s office, where Theo Rose has something interesting to say about his longtime wife, Ivy: “I’d rather live with her than a wolf.” It’s especially interesting because the question the therapist asked was: What are 10 things you love about each other?
After a few minutes of blistering back and forth—Ivy suggests that one good thing about her husband is “he has hands”—the therapist is outraged and resigns. “I see so much resentment, I don’t think you have the ability to fix your problems,” she tells them.
There are dark marriage comedies, and then there are “roses,” escalating hatred that has all the fun sucked out by the time a loaded gun comes out. It’s hard to move tonally from microaggressions to burning someone’s prized books to attempted murder and comedy.
It was the trap that sank the 1989 Danny DeVito-directed version of “The Wars of the Roses,” and it’s the same thing that makes the Jay Roach-directed “Roses” so unsettling. Seeing a marriage portrayed with such savagery, with both actors hoping to get maximum hurt, is like “Marriage Story” on MDMA.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman , of course, bring a certain dry Britishness to the roles originally played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. They’re witty and arch, sarcastic and passive-aggressive. You believe in their love, but you also believe they might hate each other.
He’s a quirky, high-flying architect—adding artistic flourishes like cascading balconies—and she’s a stand-up chef—weirdly capable of making both intricate, sculptural desserts and home-cooked seafood—who’s raising two teenagers when the action takes place. Her career hits a terrifying roadblock, and her flight takes a nosedive when she opens a restaurant, We Have Crabs!
Reversing roles, Cumberbatch’s Theo now becomes a laundress, a maker of children’s lunches—”I could be building children instead of houses,” he says—while Colman’s Ivy jets off to cook for David Chan while her champagne flute is topped up.
Screenwriter Tony McNamara sets these twosomes in the affluent California enclave of Mendocino, a place of Negronis and Audis. He surrounds them with a motley crew, including a couple, Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, dealing with their own marital inertia.
Samberg probably has the saddest line when he says of his wife, “When we were younger, I knew what she was going to say before she said it. Now I don’t know what she said after she said it.” For her part, McKinnon does her own bug-eyed, drunken, hypersexual thing-weary character, which she seems to only do now after reaching the peak of it in “Barbie.”
Theo takes on the kids — including daily wind sprints and Charles Bukowski quotes — while Ivy misses key home moments, like her daughter’s first period. Resentments build, and their friends notice “sporadic, dizzying waves of hate.” Neither wants to apologize or pump. One has “bottomless neediness,” the other has “caustic narcissism.” DeepFake videos posted to hurt his customer list lead him to hack her restaurant’s salespeople to screw up the stock. Then the shooting begins.
The problem with “Roses” — 1989 or 2025 — is that it doesn’t know what it wants to say about marriage. Maybe this passionate love eventually fades, and we should just find the moments of joy that remain? That only someone who loves you can hurt you so much? That we should never let small grievances metastasize or switch roles in the middle of a marriage? That we should never, ever, ever, ever get along again?
Maybe it’s that we’re constantly trying to tap into the deep well of love that started it all. One terrifying line Ivy says to Theo sums it up: “You stopped. You’re not supposed to stop.”
“Roses,” a Spotlight Pictures release that hits theaters Friday, is rated for “language throughout, sexual and drug content.” Running time: 105 minutes. Two stars out of four.
