The Roses

Theo Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy Rose (Olivia Colman) can never be happy or successful at the same time. When Theo is designing ostentatious buildings with sails on top of them, Ivy is running an ambitious restaurant that serves maybe 30 customers per week. When a freak, once-in-a-lifetime storm blows through and that sail becomes a flying weapon that destroys the rest of the building, Ivy serves a very famous food critic a delicious meal, and her career takes off. While Theo is the laughing stock of his industry, Ivy becomes the toast of hers overnight.

He tries to be happy for her, but he can’t resist his resentment toward her. Ivy finds herself making so much money that she can afford to give Theo his groove back by allowing him to design a house together. He makes it a shrine to his own arrogance. Everything about it is reflective of himself–the only thing of hers in the whole place is a stove that once belonged to Julia Child. When Theo and Ivy decide to split up, the house becomes their weapon against each other. He wants it because he designed it. She wants it because she paid for it. Nothing else matters in the war of the Roses.

There are different kinds of onscreen chemistries. You have a palpable sense of romance between leads in a rom-com, two actors who can convince you that they’re in love. And then there’s the kind of chemistry between leads who can convince you that they absolutely loathe each other. Fred and Ethel from I Love Lucy. George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The way that The Roses wants it is to have both chemistries from its leads, as they begin the story very much in love, and end it shooting guns and throwing knives at each other. Cumberbatch and Colman do their best work in between extremes. I never bought them as in love, and I never bought them as hating each other, but they hit a sweet spot right there in the middle, as a couple who fell out of love, and languish in a sort of romantic purgatory. There’s a genuine warmth to a moment, at a marriage counseling session, when an assignment to tell each other what they love about each other dissolves into insults, but they laugh it off. It’s such a great, sincere bit of chemistry; I wish that could have been the whole movie.

The Roses tries to balance a sort of dry, British wit with over-the-top SNL-style silliness, and these extremes never quite jive with each other. Jay Roach, perhaps best known for directing the Austin Powers movies, knows his way around a comedy. And Tony McNamara, who’s written scripts for Yorgos Lanthimos, knows how to push the boundaries of darkness. I get the feeling that the sensibilities between writer and director were simply at odds with each other. Because when it works, it works; it just so frequently doesn’t. Cumberbatch and Colman are never quite sure when to go big or when to reel it in. Meanwhile, their best friends and go-to couple, Amy and Barry (Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg), seem to understand the assignment and steal every scene they’re in. They hover right above the realm of seriousness and ridiculousness.

The original The War of the Roses, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner and directed by Danny DeVito, was a significantly darker picture that really leaned into its cynicism. It was sure of what it wanted to be and dove in, in all its ugliness, and came out the other end as a nasty, hilarious piece of work. The Roses needed to be less afraid of how unlikeable its leads may be. Half of the fun in a dynamic like this is in seeing how awful they can make each other. 

I wouldn’t go so far as to call The Roses a failure. It’s not. I laughed. I enjoyed myself. It allowed me to check my brain at the door and get swept up by some terrific comedic performances. And there were moments of perfection scattered throughout. It just missed the mark on being something truly memorable, and it came oh, so tantalizingly close.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
The Roses arrives on Blu-ray in a single-disc release, housed in a standard case, with a removable slipcover, both containing identical artwork. Inside the case is a code that can be used for digital redemption on services like Movies Anywhere.

The world of The Roses is the kind of rom-com world where everyone is a millionaire, every kitchen is exquisite, and everyone’s apparently gone to the Nancy Meyers School of Interior Design, everything illuminated in a glow of gleaming white. In terms of overall aesthetic, it does a great job of nailing that look of a comforting, inconsequential comedy with shots of food porn galore. The disc itself is free of any technical issues like color banding or artifacts, and features are rendered sharply in 1080p high definition. Beyond the stark white of the set design, costuming embraces a bright, comedic color palette, and colors are realized brilliantly in this transfer. My major gripe is with Florian Hoffmeister’s cinematography, who also shot Antlers and Tár. His work has a phony, artificial glow about it that’s distracting–everything looks like it was shot on a green screen and the lighting added separately, in post, even if it was shot on location. The soft lighting technique he favors, particularly in close-ups of actors’ faces, makes them look airbrushed into oblivion.

The Roses provides listeners with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix. And while this is a front-heavy mix (90% of the film is witticisms and quips), needle drops, musical score, and atmospheric effects do make their way to the rear of the soundstage, along with some more blunt sound effects like a gunshot echoing to the satellite speakers. This being a fairly talky picture, priority is given to the dialogue, which always comes through cleanly and clearly without being overpowered. If I have a gripe, it’s that the overall mix is low. Just turn up your system a couple clicks louder than usual, and voila, issue resolved.

There aren’t a ton of features (such is the case with new movies printed to disc), but what more could you need from a slight comedy like this? You’ve got some making-of featurettes, interviews and bloopers.

• A House to Fight For (HD 6:55) - A behind-the-front-door look at the creation of the Roses’ home
• The Roses: An Inside Look (HD 2:33) - Interviews with the cast and crew
• Comedy Gold (HD 1:46) - Interviews with the cast on bringing the dialogue to life
• Bloopers (HD 1:55)

The Roses is perfectly decent escapist entertainment with some big laughs and terrific performances from a cast that’s game for anything. It falls just short in trying to have the best of both worlds, a dark comedy that’s wary of going pitch black. And while it struggles with each end of the spectrum, there’s a balance in the middle that it strikes often and nails, and instead of trying to master the darkness, or balance the light, it should have spent more time in that purgatorial dread, documenting a couple who’ve fallen out of love, but still have a certain spark. The video transfer on the disc looks as good as it can, but I have issues with the cinematography, which makes everything look green-screened, even though it was shot practically. The sound mix is aces, and there are some fun features to be found. All in all, The Roses may just miss the mark, but it’s Worth a Look.