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The Roses review: Colman and Cumberbatch are at war in a fun but frustratingly toothless ride

The Roses review: Colman and Cumberbatch are at war in a fun but frustratingly toothless ride

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch are arguably far too likeable to take viewers into a world where bitterness, recrimination and malice reign.

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses

Jaap Buitendijk/Searchlight Pictures

Terry Staunton

★★★☆☆

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Can national treasures be nasty? Are beloved public figures capable of convincing us they’re cruel?

The anatomy of a marriage disintegrating into a sea of vitriol and two-way psychological torture is undeniably grim subject matter, a highwire act for a filmmaker who, if the job’s done properly and honestly, leaves little room for the audience to root for either protagonist.

Andy Samberg and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses

Andy Samberg and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses Searchlight Pictures

And therein lies the flaw with The Roses; its leads are far too likeable in everyday life to take viewers into a world where bitterness, recrimination and malice reign.

Both Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch have entries on their CVs where a film role has required them to be unsavoury types, yet here director Jay Roach seems to begin the tale with a Year Zero premise of characters who are charming and quick-witted, a filmic reflection of the stars’ familiar personalities from chat shows and awards ceremonies.

Perhaps the intention is to heighten the shock value when the lovebirds subsequently turn on each other, but the viciousness is diluted by polite slapstick and a few too many zappy one-liners.

Sunita Mani, Olivia Colman, and Ncuti Gatwa in The Roses standing in a café and smiling.

Sunita Mani, Olivia Colman, and Ncuti Gatwa in The Roses. Jaap Buitendijk/Searchlight Pictures

Theo and Ivy Rose are well-to-do Brits abroad, he a globally renowned architect, she a skilled chef with a radically creative streak; however, when a freak storm destroys one of the former’s buildings, leaving his reputation in tatters, the latter steps up to be the chief breadwinner.

It’s a switch that necessitates changes to their respective parenting roles, although disputes over the raising of their children pale against other confrontations fuelled by power, fame, wealth and ego.

A mutual decision to split up leads to the inevitable who-gets-what in the divorce settlement, centred largely on the luxury California cliffside house Theo designed and built but which Ivy paid for.

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses Searchlight Pictures

Battle lines drawn, the remainder of the narrative is a mildly comic game of tit-for-tat that involves such artillery as a spouse trapped in a room while grindcore band Napalm Death blasts out of the house’s in-built sound system, the torching of expensive imported moss (yes, moss), and the destruction of a bygone TV celebrity’s vintage stove.

It’s a fun ride, admittedly, if lacking the venom that might have given it the edge of the earlier version of Warren Adler’s novel, filmed under its full title The War of the Roses in 1989, in which Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were genuinely awful to each other.

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Instead, we have a couple who are initially presented as all-round good eggs and who never quite manage to shake the image off; at times Colman’s plummy, sing-song Englishness is so off the scale it’s as if she’s overdosed on Joyce Grenfell pills.

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Tony McNamara’s script is clearly tailored to its British stars, groaning under the weight of (Oscar) Wildean wordplay that often makes scenes read like drawing room theatre productions staged specifically for supporting players Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon to laugh at the Limeys and their funny foreign ways.

As the Roses’ closest couple friends, they’ve presumably been shoehorned into proceedings to illustrate a different type of dysfunctional marriage that’s found a way to thrive – McKinnon does admirably well, considering how little’s on the page.

Meanwhile, Allison Janney brings a touch of comedic class in what amounts to an extended cameo as Ivy’s lawyer, a ruthlessly hardnose quality that Colman herself never gets to play with any degree of persuasion.

But for all the star power and talent of those names a little lower on the credits roll, The Roses is essentially a two-hander, designed around the notion of nice people forced into dirty tricks and dastardly deeds.

Everyone, Colman and Cumberbatch especially, appears to be having a lovely time lampooning what is for most people in the real world a harrowing state of affairs; sly grins winning out over true sadism.

This is not a bad film, by any means, it’s just frustratingly toothless when it should be leaving visible bite marks; a black comedy that’s nowhere near black enough.

Authors

Terry Staunton

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