Word war two Reimagining of 1980s book 'The War of the Roses,' new film offers a fresh jolt of black humour By: Alison Gillmour Posted: 4:27 PM CDT Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025

In the 1980s, Warren Adler’s terrifically cold and bitter book, The War of the Roses, billed as “the classic novel of divorce,” was made into a marginally less cold and bitter film. (At least the dog doesn’t die!)

The 1989 Kathleen Turner-Michael Douglas movie now seems like an emblematic Reagan-era artifact, a tale of marriage gone bad and materialism gone mad, with a Washington, D.C., power couple fighting to the death over Staffordshire china and Baccarat crystal.

This new version freely adapts and updates the source material. Screenwriter Tony McNamara (known for Disney’s Cruella, as well as edgy Yorgos Lanthimos projects Poor Things and The Favourite) and director Jay Roach (who’s gone from Austin Powers flicks to more serious political films such as Game Change and Trumbo) have changed the stakes, shifted the gender politics and — perhaps responding to our era of “conscious uncoupling” — made the marital breakdown a lot more subtle but a little less dark.

There are gains and losses to their approach, but the gains are multiplied by the inspired casting of the leads. As Ivy and Theo Rose, Olivia Colman (The Crown) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) are good individually and brilliant together, clearly having a ball as their characters play off each other’s worst impulses.

In a recklessly quick courtship, Theo and Ivy meet, spark and decide to relocate from England to northern California. Theo is an architect tired of designing soulless tower blocks for a big London firm. Ivy wants a fresh start as a chef.

In Mendocino, Theo’s work initially takes precedence. He’s been commissioned to design a museum of maritime history, a showy statement structure topped with a large metal sail.

“It’s a metaphor,” Theo explains to a design doubter. Ivy is holding down the home front — the couple now have two kids — while running a casual seafood shack three days a week.

Then a freak storm blows in, closing highways and funnelling stranded travellers – including the food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle — into Ivy’s restaurant. Meanwhile, Theo’s metaphorical sail catches those stormy winds a little too well, and the building — and Theo’s career — crash to the ground.

Their professional situations now flipped, Theo takes on the family’s domestic duties, while Ivy builds a moneymaking restaurant empire.

The 1989 film involved a sudden loss of love and then a long, drawn-out divorce deathmatch. The 2025 version – the title has dropped the reference to war — gives us a lot more of the marriage and its gradual, tortuous unwinding. There are unspoken tensions, seething resentments and circular arguments, an emotional panorama that might sound bleak but is actually highly watchable, mostly because of the fizzing comic chemistry of the performances.

Given Cumberbatch and Colman’s Britishness, it’s intriguingly hard to tell exactly when the cutting banter and English understatement tip over into outright contempt and withdrawal.

Even the couple’s nastiest moments are shot through with shared, self-aware humour, as when they go to an earnest, touchy-feely North American couples therapist, who is appalled by their verbal cruelty. Ivy and Theo are able to bond, at least temporarily, by laughing at her.

All the simmering anger finally erupts, though, during a classic cinematic “dinner party from hell,” which takes place in the couple’s new cliffside dream house, which Theo has designed and Ivy has financed.

At this point, the battle of snark breaks out into a shooting war, which showcases Roach’s knack for controlled chaos. Since the script has already prepped us with Chekhov’s gun, Chekhov’s dagger and Chekhov’s life-threatening raspberry allergy, it’s not a complete surprise when things go really, really bad.

Considering the talent involved, the film has some frustrating dead spots. Roach brings together a gifted ensemble cast, including Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Jamie Demetriou and Zoe Chao as the couple’s friends, Ncuti Gatwa and Sunita Mani as Ivy’s co-workers, and Allison Janney as a killer divorce lawyer, but gives them almost nothing to do.

In fact, these minor characters are so poorly integrated into the larger story that McKinnon’s weirdo antics just feel like an irritating distraction.

McNamara struggles with structure and tone, sometimes veering between profound Bergmanesque insights and profane insult comedy in a way that shortchanges both modes.

Still, if the Roses’ relationship is thorny, Colman and Cumberbatch are a perfect comic match, and the story’s ending, though different from the original, still manages to deliver a jolt of black humour.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca