X
- 2025
- R
- Searchlight Pictures
- 1 h 45 m
- 2025
- R
- Searchlight Pictures
- 1 h 45 m
Summary Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch): successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids. But beneath the façade of their supposed ideal life, a storm is brewing – as Theo’s career nosedives while Ivy’s own ambitions take off, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment...
Directed By: Jay Roach
Written By: Warren Adler, Tony McNamara
- 2025
- R
- Searchlight Pictures
- 1 h 45 m
- 2025
- R
- Searchlight Pictures
- 1 h 45 m
The Roses
58
6.5
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Summary Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch): successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids. But beneath the façade of their supposed ideal life, a storm is brewing – as Theo’s career nosedives while Ivy’s own ambitions take off, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment...
Directed By: Jay Roach
Written By: Warren Adler, Tony McNamara
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 38 Critic Reviews
58
55% Positive
21 Reviews
21 Reviews
37% Mixed
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
8% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 38 Critic Reviews
58
55% Positive
21 Reviews
21 Reviews
37% Mixed
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
8% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Aug 25, 2025
The Roses is the kind of movie you should be seeing with a crowd, even if it doesn't seem to demand a big screen experience. See it with your parents. See it with your significant other. Just see it.
Aug 25, 2025
An ambitious comedy, not because it’s so big but because it’s so delicate. This film could crumble at any minute. It veers dangerously from misery to whimsy to horror to hope.
User Score
Generally Favorable Based on 67 User Ratings
6.5
60% Positive
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
33% Mixed
22 Ratings
22 Ratings
7% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable Based on 67 User Ratings
6.5
60% Positive
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
33% Mixed
22 Ratings
22 Ratings
7% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
Aug 30, 2025
I was hoping this version wouldn’t be a brutal as its predecessor and it wasn’t. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman gave some humanity to their character’s marriage whilst still showing the difficulties that can arise in a marriage. There were so many hysterical moments and wait until you see the dinner segment - it was epic. I’m going to see it again tomorrow.
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Sep 2, 2025
“The War Of The Roses” came out in 1989 and here are excerpts from my review (with the names changed): “It’s about love gone sour in a very vicious way. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch start out happily, but after years their marriage deteriorates. Their battle becomes more and more unpleasant while remaining wickedly funny to the bitter end.” All of this applies to this new version. As always, Colman is a delight, with a cheery smile that’s heartbreaking when it turns sour. Cumberbatch is the more reserved character, but he still manages to merge the comedy with the drama. Supporting couple Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg provide additional comic fun. The script is smart and incisive, while Jay Roach’s direction mines every hint of humor, while keeping the love intact (the original was helmed by Danny Devito). The final line from that earlier review still works: “It’s a deliciously dark story of love and hate.” And the final scene of this version is even more tasty!
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Aug 28, 2025
If the film doesn’t radically deepen the conversation around the gender politics or financial intricacies of marriage, it does find new textures in the way ambition corrodes intimacy.
Aug 28, 2025
Roach and screenwriter Tony McNamara sought a different perspective for the material. The result is more dramatic, less over-the-top, and proves to be tonally uneven. The humor is muted and less overtly vicious, but the more serious approach doesn’t quite succeed.
Sep 2, 2025
Remakes are odious, even when they’re nothing more than harmless television takeoffs on successful feature films, but The Roses is an especially egregious waste of time and talent because it takes itself so seriously.
Aug 25, 2025
Rather than being an entertaining trainwreck, the finale nihilistically undermines all the good and thoughtful stuff that came before, doing the couple dirtier than they ever could to each other.
Aug 28, 2025
By taking the “dark” out of the dark comedy, “The Roses” can’t decide what it wants to be, and becomes as flimsy as its setting: Mendocino is played by a seaside town in Devon, United Kingdom, and it looks more like New England than Northern California.
Aug 30, 2025
I’m old enough to remember the original with the great cast including Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner & Danny DeVito. Won’t give any spoilers re that movie but it was excellent. Having seen a couple of trailers to this with the excellent English line up of Olivia Colman & Benedict Cumberbatch, I was very much looking forward to this 2025 version. The release coincided with Cineworld’s £4 a ticket weekend which resulted in a packed screening. All which added to the feel good atmosphere. The movie was a riot from start to finish. Brilliant sharp & witty script combined with superb performances from all the cast. Loved every moment of it.
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Oct 23, 2025
Mildly entertaining and relatable enough to keep the plot going.
6/10, It's not the best British/American film I've seen, but it's not bad, unlike where it's totally unbearable.
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Sep 6, 2025
When Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman come together for a movie, it becomes a prerequisite to go watch it. The Roses is the remake of the 80's movie The War of the Roses, which is an adaptation of a novel by the same name. Theo and Ivy Rose move to the US to live their dream. Theo, an architect loses his job when his latest design collapses in a storm. At the same time, Ivy's restaurant dreams take flight causing a shift in familial duties for the couple. This leads to a lot of friction and ultimately a chain of events that threaten to destroy their lives. The Roses may not be a great movie but having the lead pair go at each other's throats was fun to watch. Their British banter is not something you get experience everyday. And it's been a while since I saw Cumberbatch in something other than his customary cape and beard. Coleman channels her culinary skills from The Bear. The supporting cast is stacked, including the likes of Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Demetriou & Zoë Chao. But my favourite was the cameo by Allison Janney . The Roses is a fun to watch, but also quite intense towards the end as tensions reach peak levels. I enjoyed watching it primarily due to the lead pair. A decent one-time watch by the director Austin Powers & Meet the Parents franchises.
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Aug 30, 2025
"The Roses" thrives on the savagery and sharp witty dialogue that Tony McNamara brings to this modern retelling of “The War of the Roses.” Benedict Cumberbatch, funnier here than ever, and Olivia Colman, precise as always, engage in hilarious, uncomfortable & campy verbal clashes, hurling emotional daggers one moment, and revealing their tainted yet undeniable affection for each other the next. Directed by Jay Roach and written by Tony McNamara, reimagines Warren Adler’s 1981 novel for a new era. It’s a satirical black comedy that doubles as a contemporary remake of Danny DeVito’s 1989 classic The War of the Roses. This time, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman step into the roles once made famous by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, with Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon playing their friends caught in the crossfire. What sets this version apart is the way it reconfigures the couple’s roles. In DeVito’s original, Barbara (Turner) and Oliver (Douglas) build their dream home together, only for it to become the stage where their mutual hatred explodes. Barbara yearns for independence, Oliver clings to control, and their devotion rots into annihilation. By contrast, in Roach’s The Roses, Theo (Cumberbatch) begins as the accomplished architect, while Ivy (Colman) stumbles into a restaurant venture that unexpectedly becomes a runaway success. When Theo suffers a humiliating career collapse, Ivy rises as the breadwinner, flipping the marriage dynamic on its head. To restore his pride, Theo insists on designing the family’s dream house, bankrolled by Ivy’s business success. What was once a shared vision turns into a monument to his hubris and a drain on her patience. This shift adds a contemporary edge: instead of watching a woman reclaim her identity from an overbearing husband, we witness a marriage destabilized by shifting gender roles, ambition, and the resentment that follows when one partner’s success outpaces the other’s. In both films, the house serves as the ultimate symbol of marital collapse. In The War of the Roses, it was the shrine Barbara decorated and nurtured, only to fight Oliver for control as their union disintegrated. Here, it is Theo’s grand vision, constructed on Ivy’s dime. Each beam and brick becomes another wedge between them, a reminder of how love and ambition intertwine until they corrode. Roach uses this dynamic not just for tension but for satire. Where DeVito leaned into pitch-black comedy, portraying marriage as an arena of inevitable destruction, Roach and McNamara allow for irony and absurdity to mingle with the venom. The humor doesn’t erase the cruelty but reframes it: marriage, in this telling, is fragile and ego-driven, its battles as ridiculous as they are brutal. Cumberbatch and Colman are superb. He imbues Theo with a mix of arrogance, desperation, and wounded pride, while Colman makes Ivy’s arc one of quiet frustration erupting into fury. Their chemistry sells both the love that once bound them and the animosity that tears them apart. The supporting cast, Andy Samberg as Theo’s divorce lawyer and Kate McKinnon as Ivy’s confidante, helps puncture the bleakness with sharp comic beats. Allison Janney, as Ivy’s formidable attorney, brings steel to the satire. Jay Roach’s direction does not add much but the combustible chemistry between its leads makes this worth a watch. I would happily move into the breathtaking custom home these two share just so I could get a front row seat to watch these flawed yet relatable characters, dig their fascinatingly twisted bond deeper into a toxic cesspool of resentment & ego. Whose side am I on? Who wins? When it means destroying everything in the process, who cares? I’m just here for the laughs and the carnage. The problem is Roach tries to balance it with wit, finding humor in the absurdity of marital collapse. Where DeVito’s film was a cautionary tale that ended with utter devastation, Roach’s version dares to feel lighter, even a touch hopeful, which is diluting the venom that makes Adler’s story timeless. "The Roses" doesn’t erase the darkness of The War of the Roses but reframes it for today’s audiences. It suggests that modern marriages are no less susceptible to collapse, though the triggers may be different: shifting power, professional insecurities, and ambition in a world where roles are less rigid but no less fraught. Both versions trace the same descent: love to resentment, passion to destruction. But where DeVito’s film leaves audiences shaken by the futility of hate, Roach leaves them smirking, recognizing that pride and ambition can turn even the most idyllic union into combat.
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Oct 25, 2025
What a disappointment. Attempting a remake of this cult classic 35 years later is, in principle, commendable, but it was entirely unnecessary. The new adaptation strays far from the novel it’s supposed to follow, and the 1989 film remains perfectly relevant, leaving nothing to update. Despite an interesting cast, the movie drags out trivial events unnecessarily, undermining what truly matters. Clocking in at 1 hour and 39 minutes (plus a 7-minute credit sequence), it spends 1 hour and 10 minutes on a collapsing love story, 15 minutes on divorce preparations, and only at 1 hour and 25 minutes does the actual war begin—just 14 minutes before the end. Whereas the original devoted over half its runtime to this infamous conflict, here it’s almost entirely absent, and the film’s title loses all significance; even the English title is simply The Roses, not The War of the Roses, which should have been a warning. In trying to remake it with a focus on romance rather than the legendary war, the film ceases to be a comedy and becomes merely a social drama. Stick with the 1989 version—it’s far more worthwhile.
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Production Company
- Searchlight Pictures
- TSG Entertainment
- South of the River Pictures
- SunnyMarch
- Delirious Media
- Australian Government
- South Australian Government
Release Date Aug 29, 2025
Duration 1 h 45 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline This marriage ain't big enough for the both of them.
