The Roses film review — Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch unite for a marriage most foul

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

Happy couples, don’t you just hate them? Welcome to The Roses, a new black comedy of marriage most foul. On and off camera, the film is a study in troubled unions. Most visibly, it brings together British national treasures Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. The kink is that they spend much of the story wishing each other dead — their personas like strawberries and cream, over which the movie sprinkles rat poison.

The film remakes The War of the Roses (1989), adapted in turn from Warren Adler’s novel. A major refurb includes recasting the central couple as English. A London prologue finds dissatisfied architect Theo (Cumberbatch) in a meet cute with chef Ivy (Colman). The movie is eager to keep things brisk. Sex in a fridge soon follows, then cut to years later, and domestic bliss in California. Theo is now a much more satisfied architect, while Ivy runs a hobby restaurant between managing the kids. Until in a night of both triumph and disaster, fortunes reverse. The marriage? Doomed.

Behind the scenes, another partnership tries to work things out. Writer Tony McNamara was recently twice Oscar nominated for The Favourite and Poor Things, the jagged scripts he created for chilly director Yorgos Lanthimos. The director here, however, is Jay Roach, of Meet the Parents and the Austin Powers movies: a man used to making himself heard over the crunch and slurp of popcorn and Coke.

The odd couple seek shared strengths. Largely, that means keeping the reliable Colman and Cumberbatch together on-screen, even as their adorable shtick gives way to mutual loathing. All parties are on the same page with bitter zingers and darkly farcical set pieces.

But the two sides of the movie want different things. As if to the surprise of the filmmakers themselves, it could have actual substance. Here and there, puffed-up Theo and accidental success story Ivy feel less like comic stick figures, and more bone fide characters. For all the grandstand insults, what also land are small scenes of casual carelessness — excerpts from the sad little drama McNamara has half-written despite himself.

But Roach is clearly bored rigid by that, or at least has two left feet for the rhythm. Then again, he might reasonably ask, is he really the problem? Given his track record, isn’t this meant to be a fizzy jape, to whose later slapstick mayhem McNamara seems only vaguely committed? It’s a shame. Sometimes you need a film critic — sometimes a divorce lawyer.

★★★☆☆

In UK and US cinemas from August 29