What’s It About

Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Colman) and Theo (Cumberbatch): successful careers, great kids, an enviable sex life. But underneath the façade of the perfect family is a tinderbox of competition and resentments that’s ignited when Theo’s professional dreams come crashing down.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

You have that one buddy who tells the same joke twice in a single conversation? That is roughly what it feels like to see “The Roses.” Director Jay Roach tries to go for a home run with Warren Adler’s book about the collapse of a marriage, but this time the humor bombs with all the impact of a dampened napkin. Let me be real with you – I went into this film expecting Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman to perform magic on this film. These are two fantastic actors, and watching them share the screen should have been a treat. What we are presented with is watching two fine dancers do a routine they never quite perfected as a pair. The setup is not that complicated. Theo and Ivy Rose start life as the annoying couple who finish each other’s sentences and think they are the funniest people in the room. They construct modern homes, she cooks gourmet dinners, and reside in Northern California, seeming to have just stepped out of a house design magazine. Everything is beautiful until a rainy night turns their whole world around. This is where things become interesting on paper. Theo’s monumental building project – some swanky museum – is reduced to rubble in a storm in one fell swoop, putting an end to his career overnight. The same night, Ivy’s tiny struggling seafood eatery is the place to go see overnight after a rave review. Role reversal time: she’s the breadwinner, he gets to stay home with the kids. Now, this could have been a wonderful opportunity to observe how couples respond to both success and failure, particularly with a reverse gender role. However, Roach treats this subject as though he’s hesitant to get too deeply involved. Instead of letting the characters become truly ugly with one another, he recoils every time it feels like it could be real. The greatest downfall?These two people are just too likable. Colman and Cumberbatch play Ivy and Theo like they’re still hoping to save their marriage, even when they’re supposedly trying to destroy each other. By comparison, take the 1989 version with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, where you really believed these people would kill each other over a dinner plate. Here, even the worst fights feel like disagreements you would have with your college roommate. And don’t get me wrong, both actors are capable of some genuinely funny performances here. Colman has an uncanny ability to make an insult sound almost polite, and Cumberbatch can turn construction-related vernacular into poetry. But writer Tony McNamara does not give the actors material that is sharp enough. The character’s dialogue is witty, sort of, but it feels more like a sitcom where the laugh track has been taken out. It is almost as if the supporting cast, who I have enjoyed previously, are completely wasted. Andy Samberg shows up as Theo’s best friend, but he’s playing some weird passive-aggressive character that doesn’t fit him at all. Kate McKinnon appears to be acting in a completely different movie, throwing herself around like she’s still on Saturday Night Live. The only person who brings real energy is Allison Janney, who shows up for maybe ten minutes as a divorce lawyer and steals every second she’s on screen. What really bothers me about this movie is how it handles the gender dynamics. Here we have a story about what happens when the traditional roles in a marriage get switched around, but the movie barely scratches the surface of what that means. Ivy becomes an uncontested success, and Theo the house-husband, and rather than pursue a dialogue about the way society treats men and women differently in those roles, we got dumb jokes about fitness addictions and restaurant critiques. The pacing is off, too. Roach wastes a lot of time telling us how happy Theo and Ivy used to be, but then rushes through the war where they are tearing each other apart. When we finally get to the world-ending in conflict stage, it feels like a montage rather than real drama. You keep waiting for things to get crazy, but it never gets crazy enough. It looks good enough visually. The California setting is pretty, their house is gorgeous, and everything has that glossy, expensive feel that makes you think these people don’t have real problems. But that’s part of the issue – it’s hard to feel bad for characters who live in paradise and have enough money to solve most of their troubles. The tone stays confused throughout the whole thing. Sometimes it wants to be a serious drama about marriage falling apart. Other times, it reaches for dark comedy but can’t commit to being truly mean. Most of the time, it just feels like a regular romantic comedy that forgot to include the romance or the real comedy. There are moments where you can see what this movie could have been. When Ivy and Theo sit across from each other in couples therapy, trading insults like daggers, you get a taste of the bite this story needs. When they’re discussing their divorce with lawyers, there’s real tension in the room. But these scenes are islands in an ocean of missed opportunities. As a Black critic, I also have to point out how white and privileged this whole world feels. These characters live in a bubble where their biggest problems come from having too much success, and the movie never acknowledges how removed that is from most people’s reality. It’s hard to invest in characters whose idea of struggle is choosing between wine varieties. The ending tries to wrap things up in a way that feels both too neat and completely unsatisfying. Without giving anything away, let’s just put it this way, it doesn’t earn its ending, and you’ll likely leave the theatre feeling like you’ve just experienced an extraordinarily long setup for a punchline that never arrives. “The Roses” doesn’t deserve to be described as terrible, but it is exceptionally disappointing in the way only talented people playing it safe can be. An actor of Cumberbatch’s or Colman’s skill and prestige deserves better, and an audience deserves a film that has the audacity to evoke its premise to the dark and grimy depths where genuine insight lies. Instead, we are treated to a film too polite to be amusing and too shallow to be affecting. Save your cash and ask your parents to borrow the original instead.

OUR RATING – A MESSY DIVORCE 4

MEDIA

• Genre – Comedy

• Street date

• Digital – October 21, 2025
• BluRay/DVD – ‎November 25, 2025

• Video – 1080p

• Screen size 1.85:1

• Sound – English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1, Audio descriptive

• Subtitles – English SDH, French, Spanish

Extras

• Gag Reel
• A House To Fight For – A behind-the-front-door look at the epicenter of both beauty and acrimony. See the construction of the Roses’ home, hear from the designer and the filmmakers on their vision, and discover the actors’ wish to take everything from the house home with them.
• The Roses: An Inside Look – Hear from the cast and filmmakers about making The Roses. Learn about the actors’ connection and chemistry, and join the grounded, satirical, British, wry wit that only Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch can pull off.
• Comedy Gold – This cast is stacked with comedy talent bringing Tony McNamara’s witty dialogue to life with Jay Roach directing. Even Olivia Colman had to ask about this special cast, “How the F did we get them?”
• Optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles for the main feature