The Roses

Based on Warren Adler’s novel The War of the Roses, Jay Roach’s The Roses is fundamentally different from Danny DeVito’s 1989 film adaptation starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The caustic black comedy about a wealthy American couple going through a bitter divorce is reframed as a caustic satire about a wealthy British couple struggling to stay married. The razor-sharp humour is a coping mechanism for the characters, not so much a narrative genre. When they’re mean to each other, it’s amusing because of how creatively they weaponise words, but it’s also dark for how far they’re willing to go to wound each other. When they’re not mean, it’s tense because a barb or two — like a jumpscare in ghost stories — might just be around the corner. Watching them is like being trapped in a room with a dysfunctional couple and second-hand embarrassment.

The Roses is directed by veteran comedy director Jay Roach, with a script written by two-time Oscar nominee Tony McNamara. It is based on the popular 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, and sort of is the remake of its first on screen adaptation from 1989 film of the same name. The film follows Theo Rose a successful architect and his wife Ivy Rose an up-and-coming restaurateur through many years of their marriage and how it evolved and changed them over the years. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, these characters bring your worst nightmare to life while turning your belly up with dark humour that has been missing from the screens for a long time.