‘The Roses’ or — Bloomin’ Awful?
I love Danny DeVito’s ‘The War of the Roses’ (1989) so even though I knew Jay Roach’s ‘The Roses’ (2025) was more an adaptation of the original book, as opposed to a remake of DeVito’s film, I was still worried it would, for me, pale in comparison. The good news is I needn’t have worried because ‘The Roses’ doesn’t suffer in the slightest from being subjected to any form of cinematic comparison, but that’s only because the film is so unbearably god-awful that it falls flat on its face purely on its own terms and with no external help from me whatsoever.
God, I hated this movie, and to such an extent that any savage invectives or insults Cumberbatch and Colman were hurling at each other on screen sounded like lavish adoring praise compared to the seething bile I was conjuring up in the depths of my black soul towards this insufferable piece of crap. Think what she just said to her husband was nasty and brutal? Well, try asking me what I think of this sodding movie!
The film’s problem are legion, but let’s address the big one straight away — none of the conflict feels genuine.
All, and I mean ALL, the hostility is artificially generated, poorly established, overly exaggerated or, in some cases, simply appearing out of absolutely nowhere whatsoever. They have a great life, good jobs and a loving family so when they start insulting each other all I could think was “What on earth are you two moaning about?!” It’s manufactured animosity purely for the sake of surface drama meaning it never tackles the real issue driving all relationships (something the original film did and did brilliantly) and that’s ambiguity; our capacity to handle love/hate, intimacy/distance. Here it’s just two middleclass assholes making everybody’s lives (although, specifically, mine) an utter misery by swearing at each other for 120 minutes.
Which leads me onto problem #2 — the script confuses swearing for wit.
Get Colin Edwards’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Now, I’m not offended by swearing in the slightest, but what I am offended by is a comedy that trades in profanity instead of well-constructed humour, and ‘The Roses’ is possibly the worst example of this I’ve ever encountered. There’s not a single decently crafted zinger, put-down, barbed dig or acidic quip. Instead, it’s just Cumberbatch and Colman cursing at each other as though saying the word “c*nt” in an English accent is enough to count as dazzling repartee. And it’s tiring as hell because you can tell the film itself thinks it’s being so clever and sharp (it’s like a husband suddenly thinking he’s Oscar Wilde because he’s just told his wife to go fuck herself).
Although the film’s biggest crime must be laid at the feet of director, Jay Roach, because ‘The Roses’ is as visually flat and dull to look at as a collapsed cardboard box. It can be easy to forget sometimes that Danny DeVito wasn’t just a good director but, frequently, a bloody brilliant one who packed his movies with all manner of stimulating flourishes, energetic camera moves and disorientating angles. It’s part of what makes his ‘Matilda’ (1996) so delicious!
For example, take the opening titles of DeVito’s ‘Roses’: the camera moves over a gently rippling sea of beautiful white silk as romantic music plays. Is this the bed of two lovers after an evening of passionate sex? No, it’s the handkerchief of a divorce lawyer who then blows his nose into it and throws it in his bin. And there, in that one wordless shot, we know everything we need about this divorce lawyer and his view on married couples seeking his help. It’s fantastic… and ‘The Roses’ has none of that. Instead, it’s a series of static shots so unmoving and immobile it makes Michael Snow’s ‘Wavelength’ (1967) look like it was directed by Michael Bay.
Oh, and its ending is an unforgivable cop-out.
‘The Roses’ is so interminable that watching it feels like being stuck in a decades long loveless marriage itself, which did get me wondering how long it would take me to divorce this movie if I was actually married to it. I then realised that was a daft question to ask myself because I detested the movie so much I wouldn’t have bothered instigating protracted divorce proceedings but, instead, would have simply rolled over in bed one night and bashed its head in with a rock while it slept.
I then would have handed myself into the nearest police station and freely admitted my crime, secure in the knowledge that no judge or jury in the land would convict me because all I’d have to do was show them this bloody movie in court and they would’ve immediately acquitted me on grounds of cultural self-defence.
Now THAT’S genuine conflict.
