The Roses (2025)

What starts as a cute meet-cute in a London kitchen spirals into absolute chaos involving crab shells, destroyed architectural plans, and some of the most vicious one-liners I've heard all year. Jay Roach's The Roses takes Danny DeVito's 1989 dark comedy The War of the Roses and gives it a modern spin that hits way too close to home. Watching Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch tear each other apart on screen, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or hide behind my popcorn—which is exactly what makes this film so damn good.When Love Goes Nuclear

Theo (Cumberbatch) is an architect with big dreams, and Ivy (Colman) is a chef who can make magic happen in the kitchen. Their romance starts hot and heavy, full of inside jokes and the kind of chemistry that makes you believe in soulmates. Fast-forward to their life in Northern California: two kids, a beautiful house, and what looks like the perfect marriage. Theo's working on this massive nautical museum project while Ivy runs her seafood restaurant (brilliantly called "We've Got Crabs").Then everything goes sideways. A literal storm hits, Theo's museum project collapses spectacularly, and his career basically implodes overnight. Meanwhile, a food critic gets caught in the same storm, stumbles into Ivy's restaurant, and suddenly she's the next big thing in the culinary world. Talk about terrible timing. In one night, their entire dynamic flips—he's unemployed and humiliated, she's successful and in demand. And that's when things get ugly.Colman and Cumberbatch Are Absolutely Ruthless

Remakes. Reboots. Reinventions. Redundancy. It's the common practice in Hollywood of late, sometimes offering us victorious reimagining of what can be considered cinematic classics while also, more often, falling flat on their UN-imaginative faces in utter defeat and lackluster results. Admittedly, with this in mind, I went into the newest incarnation of "The War of the Roses" with typical trepidation and cautious optimism.

Fortunately, what I was given was a fantastically, though expectedly scathing, adventure in dark humor, satirical excellence, and sometimes straight up, hilarious FUN. I mean, it's brutal, no doubt. There usually wouldn't be, or frankly SHOULDN'T be, any genuine elation to be had when watching the deconstruction of two people's relationship that begins so beautifully, yet ends so unceremoniously.

BUT, with director Jay Roach (the "Austin Powers" and "Meet The Parents" franchises' helmer) behind the wheel, plus the combination of arguably two of Britain's most talented stars yucking it up and causing all sorts of relational chaos on screen, the film adeptly, effectively, and YES, entertainingly, follows couple Theo and Ivy Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman) and how their love-turns-into-hate-turns-into-love/hate when circumstances good and ill take them in decidedly different directions and mindsets about their union.