Movie review
For those who like their comedy so dark that it’s practically blackened, may I present “The Roses.”
This chronicle of a marriage falling apart, with the house posed as the pivotal issue, represents a vast improvement on the 1989 version with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (which is virtually unwatchable — I tried). Here, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch play the disintegrating couple Ivy and Theo Rose. Their chemistry and comedic timing here is marvelous, with the sparks continuing to fly even as the relationship dramatically sours. The script, from Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” “Poor Things”), features dialogue sharp as a well-honed knife, with the banter of the Roses and their increasingly biting insults exceptionally crisp and witty. (She: “If this is the easy bit, smother me with a pillow.” He: “Will do.” She: “Said a little too quickly for my liking.”) And director Jay Roach comes in appropriately in the middle of his (odd!) “Trumbo” to “Austin Powers” range. It’s arguably an excellent version of the movie it sets out to be — yet I can’t recommend it without reservations.
If, like me, you’re especially drawn to “The Roses” to see Colman in the role of a chef, you’ll be amused by those bits. The meet-cute, shown in a flashback, has Theo as a diner bursting into the kitchen where Ivy is working, upon which she gives him a taste of her carpaccio, then has sex with him in the walk-in — for those familiar with the restaurant industry, the extreme unlikelihood of that type of welcome adds to the fun. Equally unrealistic, but also quite funny: Ivy’s response when she catches two staffers in flagrante delicto in the pantry at her seafood spot (in what’s maybe the only truly dumb joke in the film — and one that Colman’s charm saves — it’s called “We’ve Got Crabs!”). Some pretty food is shown intermittently; the hoped-for-yet-feared restaurant critic appears; the power of superchef David Chang comes into play; Ivy wins a James Beard award (“the food Oscars”); and Julia Child’s stove, which Ivy acquires, becomes an issue.
As Ivy’s culinary career rises meteorically, Theo has a spectacular flameout as an architect, with a hilarious meme to reinforce it. The Roses’ occupations, of course, are here to forward the plot as two archetypes of extreme ego (about which both chefs and architects might rightfully be offended if it weren’t so clearly caricatures). As the Roses’ friends, Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg function to show that even their own apparently healthier marriage may be a tolerable trap at best, and both are very funny doing so. The marvelous Allison Janney makes too brief of an appearance as a coldblooded, bloodthirsty divorce lawyer.
Their egos get the better of the Roses, with differences about raising their children involved, as well as the construction of the lavish house that will be their undoing. The barbs descend into abusiveness, then vengeance and violence — albeit cartoonish — take over. I’ll confess that I don’t have much stomach for any additional cruelty in the world right now, fictional or not, and the movie got less and less humorous to me. With the brilliance of Colman and Cumberbatch, the Roses are truly lovable in the beginning, and their exaggerated dual degradation made me feel a little sick.
If you’re made of slightly stronger stuff, you might very well find “The Roses” a total tonic. There’s one easy way to suss it out: Taste-test the trailer. That might sound obvious, but this particular preview closely follows the trajectory of the film’s mood — including a dinner-party scene where the sly insults get darker and darker still — in a way that will give you an unmistakable gut feeling about whether “The Roses” is for you.
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