Marriage comedy turns dark with escalating hatred and shocking violence

Marriage comedy turns dark with escalating hatred and shocking violence

Hyderabad: There are dark marriage comedies and then there’s ‘The Roses,’ an escalating hate-fest that, by the time a loaded gun comes out, all the fun has been sucked out. It’s hard tonally to go from micro-aggressions to the burning of someone’s prized books to attempted murder and stay a comedy.

That was the trap that sank the Danny DeVito-directed 1989 version ‘The War of the Roses’, and it’s the same quicksand that makes the Jay Roach-directed ‘The Roses’ so unpleasant.

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Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman naturally bring a certain dry Britishness to roles originally portrayed by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. They are witty and arch, sarcastic and passive-aggressive. You believe their love, but you also believe they can hate each other.

He is a prickly, high-flying architect — adding artistic flourishes like cascading balconies — and she is a stalled chef — weirdly able to make both elaborate, sculptural desserts and down-home seafood — who are raising their two teenagers when the action gets going.

His career hits a horrific roadblock, and hers takes flight when she opens the restaurant We’ve Got Crabs! Switching roles, Cumberbatch’s Theo now becomes the laundry-folding, kids’ lunch-making, while Colman’s Ivy jets off to cook with David Chang, while her Champagne flute is being topped up.

Theo takes charge of the kids, including daily wind sprints and Charles Bukowski quotes, while Ivy misses key home moments, like her daughter’s first period. Resentments build, and their friends notice ‘sporadic, dizzying waves of hatred.’ Neither wants to apologize nor budge.

Deepfake videos posted to harm his client list led to him hacking into her restaurant vendors to screw up supplies. Then the shooting begins. The problem with ‘The Roses’ — 1989 or 2025 — is that it doesn’t know what it wants to say about marriage.