Not many people were clamoring for a reimagining of The War of the Roses, the 1989 black comedy directed by Danny DeVito and starring himself, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the titular warring couple. But now we have one, simply titled The Roses, featuring an all-star cast headed by Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch and directed by Austin Powers and Meet the Parents helmer Jay Roach. The film has been hobbled with middling reviews (it currently sits at a 65 percent critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes), and, if you caught the trailer, you may or may not have thought it looked like a complete and utter chaotic chore. What a wonderful surprise, then, that The Roses is one of 2025’s funniest comedies, and one of the sweetest. The trailer makes it look like a completely different (and far less evolved) movie than the finished product.
Don’t Be Dissuaded by the Reviews
Colman and Cumberbatch play Theo and Ivy, London expats now living in Mendocino, California, (the movie was shot in New South Wales, Australia). He’s an architect; she’s a stay-at-home mom slash part-time restaurateur, though she seems more committed to smoking her evening joints. Theo experiences a professional disaster and loses his job, which happens to align with Ivy’s restaurant becoming the town’s hotspot. It’s decided they’ll swap places for a while: he’ll take care of the kids, and she’ll be the bread winner. Of course, the professional and personal disbalances lead to irreparable issues between Theo and Ivy, something which is not lost on their pre-teen children.
The Roses depicts one of the most realistic on-screen long-term relationships. Cumberbatch and Colman are some of the best at what they do, and here they share an enviable chemistry which swings from randy lust to red-hot hatred, sometimes in the same scene. The script, by The Favourite and Poor Things scribe Tony McNamara, is absolutely fabulous. (Roach’s direction only very occasionally lets it down.) The film’s smartest choice is that the hatred between Theo and Ivy doesn’t blossom overnight, and as the movie goes on it waxes and wanes. For most of the movie, they behave as you wish couples in these movies would. They fight and nitpick, but then they call themselves out as the jerk and apologize. It’s terrifically well-gauged, and the nuances make the broader comedic developments that permeate the final act much more believable. You sense a real love between Theo and Ivy, even when they’re literally trying to kill each other.
The Roses Achieves a Tricky Tonal Combination
Roach, never a director of great nuance but always fine with his actors, strikes a surprisingly delicate tone between jet-black comedy and pathos. That neither faction betrays the other is remarkable; the movie never slips into piety or attempts to soften or apologize for its darker choices. The ending is heartwarming, horrifying, and hysterical all at once, and admirable in its commitment to the bit.
The supporting cast, including Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, and (briefly) Allison Janney, are on top form. McKinnon provides one of the movie’s funniest punchlines near the end, and Samberg is particularly sharp as her sad-sack husband. There are perhaps too many characters orbiting the action; some could have been combined or outright eliminated to pare down the running time. At a relatively slim 105 minutes, the movie feels a bit bogged down in the middle when it tries to pay service to the extended supporting cast, such as Theo and Ivy’s co-workers.
Though many have slated The Roses as an empty Hollywood romp, there’s much more working beneath the surface than your typical summer comedy. It can’t be overstated how sharp McNamara’s script is, and for all the rude behavior and raucous set pieces, the moments you walk away remembering are the quieter ones, the beats in which characters barely pass words but speak volumes. Roach, McNamara, and their estimable cast have crafted one of the year’s most consistently laugh-out-loud comedies, and also one of the most unexpectedly thought-provoking.
