It’s Labor Day Weekend here in the United States, and this year that actually means there are two promising-looking movies to possibly see over the three-day weekend. There’s the dark comedy The Roses, which has a talented screenwriter, two big stars, and an average director; and then there’s Caught Stealing, which looks a lot more promising, truth be told. And yet, I opted to see The Roses first. Why would I do that?
Oh, that’s simple. I have other things to do, and The Roses started first. I’ll probably see the other one tomorrow.
The movie opens with married couple Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy Rose (Olivia Colman) at a marriage counselor, and a simple exercise of listing ten things they like about each other has gone horribly wrong, but produces laughter from both of the Roses. Why? Well, therein lies the way this movie goes. Flashbacks fill in how they met in England, decided to move to America, and set up shop as Theo becomes a successful architect while Ivy is essentially a stay-at-home mother who, with Theo’s help, opens a small restaurant part-time to take advantage of her talent as a chef. However, when the same bad storm wrecks Theo’s career while simultaneously sending Ivy’s into the stratosphere, changes hit their relationship hard as Ivy starts to work more while Theo stays home with the kids.
Unfortunately, Theo’s and Ivy’s life was pretty good before all this happened, and the general witty repartee the pair enjoyed now seems designed to break them. However, they are trying to keep things together. One of the chief sources of humor here is that everyone around Theo and Ivy seem to think the pair would be happier separated, but both Theo and Ivy resist that idea for as long as they can. In the meantime, their cutting remarks hit harder than they perhaps intend them too as the pair are dealing with marital discord for their first time in their relationship, and this isn’t the sort of thing that will go away all that easily. Can these two get out of this mess with their dignity intact? Or heck, with their lives?
I may not have been too impressed by the fact that director Jay Roach was repeatedly referred to as the director of Meet the Parents, but writer Tony McNamara is another story. Besides writing The Favorite, he was also the creative force behind the hilarious Hulu series The Great. The Roses has all the best attributes of that show, one where witty dialogue is just as likely as emotionally-complex characters. That is very much the case here. While the movie hints that there are no completely happily-married couples in the cast, it is the biting commentary between Cumberbatch and Colman that are the real highlights here. The movie does a good job of painting neither of the two as the villain. The marital problems are the fault of both parties, but the problem seems to be more a marital mismatch than anything else, and both are often shocked by the awful things other people say about either or both of them. Cumberbatch’s Theo even at one point chants, “Don’t be a dick” before Ivy comes home, showing he isn’t interested in hurting her, and the feeling is largely mutual. The two leads deliver their nastiest lines with a real gusto, making what they say very funny, but both are also sympathetic characters. This isn’t the sort of movie where the audience is expected to take sides.
That isn’t to say the movie isn’t without its flaws. Cumberbatch and Colman are both so good in their respective comedic roles that they make most of the rest of the cast, many of them familiar comedic actors in their own right. The only one who really holds her won is Allison Janney, who appears in all of one scene as Ivy’s formidable divorce attorney. Likewise, the movie’s last few minutes seem less like an ending and more like a shrug, like the movie didn’t quite know where to go. Theo and Ivy do stay in character as the movie winds down, but I kept waiting for something, and the way that something happened just didn’t work for me. That said, though I have never seen the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner original, I did end up enjoying this movie far, far more than I thought I would.
Grade: B+
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