The Stream: Why should I care about these rich people creating their own problems?

The Big Screen: One laugh out loud moment.

The Final Bill: The Roses fails to deliver the comedy or darkness enough to be memorable.

– Trip Fontaine
Director: Jay Roach
Writers: Tony McNamara
Stars: Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg, Ncuti Gatwa, Allison Janney
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R for language throughout, sexual content, and drug content
Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes
Production Companies: SunnyMarch, South of the River Pictures, Garden Studios, Adler Entertainment Trust, Searchlight Pictures
Platform: In theaters August 29, 2025
Notable Trailers: Is This Thing On?, One Battle After Another, Bugonia, Avatar: Fire and Ash

How’s it going, Streamers!?!? It’s Labor Day weekend, so here’s a remake that *SPOILER ALERT* turns out to be a chore to get through. For some reason, The War of the Roses has been adapted again, but this time into a lighter comedy, The Roses, starring British stars, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. Colman and Cumberbatch play Ivy and Theo Rose, a married couple, whose marriage is falling apart as their careers take divergent paths. Ivy, a successful chef, and Theo, an out-of-work architect, attempt to navigate the rough patches of their relationship through seething anger and petty arguments. Drunk dinner party hijinks ensue.

Look, I don’t know who was clamoring for another adaptation of The War of the Roses, but I guess it could have been a good idea for an update of the material. The Roses, however, doesn’t do much with the changes it’s made for the new millennium. Moreover, the movie lacks any bite to its attempts at humor. While the movie attempts a light and humorous touch, it’s rarely actually funny and a divorce comedy, in my opinion, shouldn’t be so light. There is one laugh out loud moment, but the movie is so forgettable overall that I don’t even remember specifically what made me laugh out loud. Anyway, despite good performances from Colman and Cumberbatch, their characters are mainly just annoying and it’s hard to care about these people. Their problems are so easily remediable that this movie could have ended with one obvious decision at around the 45-minute mark. I was checked out from that point on. Beyond that, the war between Ivy and Theo, which was such a memorable part of the movie from 1989, doesn’t escalate until too late into the movie, and it’s not very fun or funny. I’m pretty disappointed by this movie because it does have ingredients that should make it entertaining, funny and potentially insightful, but it is none of those things.

Ultimately, The Roses does not deliver the laughs or the acerbic bite necessary for a remake of The War of the Roses. While the cast is decent, they all seem to be in different variations of the same movie, but none are very funny. Aside from one laugh out loud moment, which I can’t even remember right now, this movie fails to make you care about its main characters or their relationship. It’s a handful of popcorn at best.