Benedict Cumberbatch is not known for comedy. Neither is Olivia Colman, unless you count her brief turn a few years back as Chef Terry on The Bear. But together as Theo and Ivy Rose in the Searchlight feature film The Roses, they are an unbeatable comedic couple in an eminently watchable two hours.
In the adaptation of Warren Adler’s novel The War of the Roses and the 1989 film starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, we first meet the couple in the psychiatrist’s office trying to work on their marriage. It’s a session ending with the shrink telling them they can’t work things out, which causes the couple to burst out in laughter, even after a shredding series of insults of each other.
But there’s no denying that things have gotten complicated in their marriage. Theo is a renowned architect who has designed what looks to become a world famous maritime museum building in Mendocino, Calif., while Ivy is the stay-at-home mom of their two young twins who loves to cook up creative concepts in their kitchen, based on her past career as a chef.
We see flashbacks of their meet-cute in a London restaurant kitchen where she works. Not to mention their hot sex just feet away from the stoves. They impetuously decide to move to America together.
But ten years later, one stormy night changes the trajectory of their lives, immortalized in an embarrassing video seen worldwide on social media.
Suddenly, Theo is the stay at home dad and Ivy opens a seafood restaurant that rapidly gains in popularity. Resentments start to grow, arguments get more heated but their underlying love for each other seems to win out, even as Theo channels his frustrations into training the kids to be Olympic-level athletes and Ivy focuses on her burgeoning restaurant empire.
The rift becomes even more exposed by the friends they hang out with, played by SNL vets Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, who can barely conceal her attraction for Theo.
Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou play another couple in their friend circle. All of them seem to be dealing with becoming bored and sometimes resentful in their relationships with each other, couplings on the verge of spinning out of control when you don’t show appreciation for the other partner.
Verbal jabs amongst all of them are especially entertaining when spoken in the British accents of Cumberbatch and Colman.
Directed by Jay Roach and written by Tony McNamara, the lacerating zingers are practically non-stop, including many c-words and f-bombs out of the mouths of the lead characters.
When Theo ends up building a to-die-for coastal home overlooking the Pacific, it become a true battleground for a relationship that has gone completely off the rails, heading for divorce court—with Allison Janney making a brief appearance as Ivy’s attorney, pitted again Samberg as Theo’s legal representative.
Does love mean always having to say you’re sorry? The answer, in The Roses, is thorny.
