THE ROSES (2025)

Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy’s (Olivia Colman) 10-year marriage starts to fail when their communication breaks down, and they find themselves at very different stages of life. When they first met, he was an architect tired of making dull London blocks of flats, and she was a chef who felt her creativity was being held back in the kitchen. It was lust at first sight, and the duo moved to California to pursue their careers and raise two children.

The Roses introduces us to Theo and Ivy in the middle of a profane therapy session. The couple are insulting every personality trait possible, obliterating the way the other looks, loves, and lives their life. After the barrage of insults, the pair laugh as if their bitter resentment is a totally normal way to interact with one’s spouse.

The main source of Theo and Ivy’s problems is their opposing shift in career prospects. As his work life tanks, mainly due to an incident with a sail and a freak thunderstorm, hers is on the rise. The little crab shack he brought her to pass the time now that the kids are a little older suddenly becomes a worldwide hit. Now, an unemployed Theo’s stuck at home looking after their children, and she’s on the front cover of magazines as one of the West Coast’s hottest restaurateurs.

For a while, it looks like The Roses is trying to explore gender dynamics in which the stay-at-home mother and high-flying professional father switch roles. She put aside her ambitions to raise their two children while he became a runaway success in his industry. Theo’s jealousy at her new lavish lifestyle, while he’s turning their sugar-loving children into protein-guzzling sport stars, almost starts a serious conversation about the shift of roles within the home.

Without losing the slapstick humour, The Roses has a lot to say about the guilt mothers feel working away from home, men struggling when they’re not the breadwinners, and fathers feeling emasculated when taking on the child-rearing roles. While the screenplay backs away before it gets too preachy and earnest, parents will likely see themselves in the arguments between the couple.

Over the years, as Ivy becomes a wealthy, powerful businesswoman, their relationship only worsens. The Roses skips ahead through time, confusingly dropping the audience into the proceedings with little context of what’s happened to warrant such distaste between the pair. This film could have benefited from letting us breathe and watch their marriage crumble in real time. There’s a big jump between seeing their little digs and them humiliating each other like it’s a sport. It all escalates much too quickly, going from acidic banter to a full-on war without much necessary build-up.

The Roses would be nothing without Colman and Cumberbatch, who are clearly having the best time making this film. But their central characters are surrounded by underwritten, grotesque caricatures who have no more depth than a Saturday Night Live sketch. These couples are meant to show other types of marriages available, both letting their problems simmer under the surface rather than unleashing them like Ivy and Theo.

No one feels like a real person outside of Theo, Ivy and their kids, with the supporting cast feeling like set dressing. Their closest friends are swinging, gun-toting liberals Barry (Andy Samberg) and Amy (a miscast Kate McKinnon). Zoe Chao, Jamie Demetriou, Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) and Sunita Mani also appear sporadically throughout the movie, their whole existence based on one joke landing. While Cumberbatch and Colman are more than enough to carry the film, it’s a shame to see such a talented supporting cast fade into the background.

One person not wasted is Allison Janney, who makes a small yet memorable appearance as an ice queen lawyer. She goes head-to-head against Samberg’s Barry and finally gives the actor the time and space to elevate his game. Sadly, this scene and subplot are over far too soon.

The film builds up to a dinner scene, which finds the entire cast in one place. Not helped by the best gags being spoiled in the trailers, Ivy and Theo unleash years of bitterness and gripes in front of their loved ones, but it’ll leave you wanting more. It’s a smartly written and entirely relatable argument, which could have been extended even further. But after this dinner party sequence, the film falls into the ridiculous. The climax is a silly set piece that requires audiences to turn off theirs brain as the pair suddenly become entirely different people.

The Roses struggles to balance the bad behaviour of each person. The key concept only really works if Ivy and Theo are as bad as each other. Initially, Theo’s the bad guy, upset at having to take care of his own children, jealous of his wife and comparing designing buildings to raising kids. But in the following two acts, Ivy’s childish irresponsibility makes it impossible to like her. Colman milks every line for the laugh, all delivered with a cheeky grin and twinkle in her eye. This is contrasted by Cumberbatch’s talent for self-deprecating humour, which means you’ll ultimately root more for him.

The Roses is a remake of Danny DeVito’s The War of the Roses (1989) starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, and the 1981 novel of the same name by Warren Adler. For fans of the ’80s film, director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents) hasn’t added much that’s fresh and new to proceedings. The film is visually blander than DeVito’s version too, placing the bickering couple in a Nancy Meyers-type world of cosy architecture and neutral colour schemes.

Tony McNamara’s (The Favourite) script is funny when it’s allowed to unleash its bitter twistedness. Anyone who’s seen his TV show The Great (2020–23) knows that McNamara can write a bitter argument between a couple and knows how to put together an insult. Putting the British couple in an American setting, surrounded by the most American of American characters, heightens their use of dry British humour, allowing them to act even more exaggeratedly, and then puts their terrible behaviour down to good old-fashioned English banter.

The Roses is ultimately a pleasantly funny script boosted by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman’s excellent performances. But fans of the original may be disappointed with how the couple’s conflict takes a back seat in favour of exploring more nuanced topics. The ups and downs of the Roses’ marriage come with a much more positive message, which means the story is more human and pro-marriage, but it also makes it a bit sappier and softer. One can’t help but miss some of the acidity of the original movie in this relatively safe studio comedy.

UK • AUSTRALIA • USA | 2025 | 105 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Jay Roach.
writer: Tony McNamara (based on the book by Warren Adler).
starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney, Belinda Bromilow, Sunita Mani, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Demetriou & Zoë Chao.