Film Review: THE ROSES (2025): Jay Roach’s Remake Offers Solid Performances, Yet it Lacks the Bite of the Source Material

The Roses Review

The Roses (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Jay Roach, written by Tony McNamara and Warren Adler and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg, Ncuti Gatwa, Sunita Mani, Zoe Chao, Jamie Demetriou, Delaney Quinn, Hala Finley, Ollie Robinson, Wells Rappaport, Allison Janney, Caroline Partridge and Margaret Clunie.

The War of the Roses was a film from the late 1980’s that made people mad in many respects because of the almost totally bleak ending the film presented to audiences. Yet, the film was a zeitgeist movie and a box-office hit so one would think the new remake would stick closely to the premise of the original picture and source material on which it was based. It doesn’t.

Director Jay Roach, unfortunately, gives the movie some sugar coating which wasn’t necessary though the lead performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are truly energetic throughout. If anything, The Roses opens extremely well as it gets off to an intriguing start until its material peters out about halfway through and one wishes for the ending of the original film to come along to give the new script a darker edge than the one this film actually possesses.

Colman plays Ivy, a chef, who meets Theo Rose (Cumberbatch), an architect, and the pair proceeds to have steamy sex right off the bat. It was too good to be true and doomed from the start. Soon, Ivy and Theo are married and have a pair of rugrats, Hattie and Roy (played much better as younger kids by Delaney Quinn and Ollie Robinson than by the older versions, Hala Finley and Wells Rappaport) and Ivy’s new crab restaurant takes off. Theo’s career crashes and burns which has him watching the children and cutting them deals to behave more maturely than they should have to. Hattie and Roy are just kids and Ivy isn’t happy when she sees Theo’s tough parenting techniques.

Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon feel misplaced here as the couple’s friends, Barry and Amy. They all go to shoot guns for fun at one point in a scene that felt like one that should have ended up on the cutting room floor. Apparently, Amy has the hots for Theo, though later on it’s made clear that Amy has no interest in leaving her husband for him.

Jay Roach isn’t always in on the joke of the original late 1980’s film or he’s cleaning it up and taking what he wants to take from the other picture. For example, The War of the Roses began with an opening credits scene with a big white sheet being displayed that turned out to be Danny DeVito’s handkerchief. This film isn’t that clever. Also, the ending has been revamped to be a bit more ambiguous. However, without the original ending, the material ultimately falls a bit flat. We need that definitive knot to be tied at the end for the story line to have a point. This time out, it’s all just bickering and ranting and acting cruel with no clear goal in mind other than to pull the rug out from everything at the end with a happier ending than was expected. This film may have a bummer ending, but Roach doesn’t show it clearly.

There are funny fight scenes and barbs that are rather witty. Things are thrown at one another by both characters and attempts are made by both of them to try to get ownership of their home. I won’t say there aren’t cruel and effective sequences, but they’re offset by the film’s kiss and make up mentality.

There’s a solid supporting cast here in terms of the people employed at Ivy’s restaurant. Ncuti Gatwa is funny as a waiter who gets to make out big when the crab place becomes a hit. Sunita Mani has some charm to spare too. She plays Jane, a character who also works for Ivy. Delaney Quinn is certainly a true find as the young daughter of Ivy and Theo. Quinn has terrific energy that keeps her scenes opposite Cumberbatch feeling full of life.

Cumberbatch and Colman have the on again/off again chemistry that the plot requires and both performers excel for the most part. It’s just that Theo makes some seriously twisted remarks early on that make him a jerk right from the get-go. It’s hard to root for him and Ivy is likable only for so long until she eventually stoops to Theo’s level. Allison Janney as Ivy’s lawyer is given very little screen time, but the great Janney makes the most of it and has fun getting lost in the shuffle.

Colman and Cumberbatch, as performers, feel smarter than the characters they play here which diminishes some of the integrity of their work in The Roses. To be fair, I wasn’t bored too much watching this film because I was excited to see where it was going in contrast to the older movie. If you go in and watch this new picture on its own merits with no reference to the source material, it may still feel like much ado about nothing without that hard-hitting ending that made the 1980’s movie a box-office success.

The Roses certainly has a lot of time to meander, running nearly two hours, and it often does beat around the bush more than it needed to. As the characters fight and make up and fight again, one will end up with whiplash. An ending is everything and the one here feels like it was a test audience approved one rather than the one that should flow naturally from the events that occur on-screen. It’s a close call, but I’m going to say pass on this one until it comes to streaming.

Rating: 6/10

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