Audiences once adored big adult comedies. Jay Roach’s champagne-fizzy “The Roses” is a seductive attempt to lure them back into theaters.
As bright, mean and ambitious as its lead characters, Theo and Ivy Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman), this resurrection of the ’80s-style R-rated crowd-pleaser is a remake of — or really, an across-the-room nod to — the 1989 hit “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as divorcees who fight to the death over their fancy chandelier.
Inspired by the venomous novel by Warren Adler, both films are metaphors for building a home and then tearing it down, although the chandelier this time is merely incidental. This snarky, self-aware couple is the type to build themselves a smart house and name its system HAL.
The Roses meet-cute in a posh London restaurant when Theo asks to borrow Ivy’s knife to slash his wrists. He’s a morose architect who aspires to build risky, revolutionary designs. She’s a kooky chef whose signature seasoning is a mix of powdered anchovy and blueberry. In the cocktail of their marriage, he adds the bitterness and she adds the spice, qualities that can be either overbearing or harmonious. Their version of sweet talk is Ivy chirping, “Never leave me — but when you do, kill me on the way out.”
Brutal humor and obstinacy bind these malcontents together for almost 15 years. Then her career takes off and his flops, upending their equilibrium. Now, they’re battling over who gets custody of their California dream mansion. Twins Hattie and Roy are secondary. (Delaney Quinn and Ollie Robinson play their kids at 10; Hala Finley and Wells Rappaport at 13.)
The script by Tony McNamara (“Poor Things”) unleashes the hilarious spouses to aim insults at each other like explosive corks. (McNamara is so skilled at putting cruel words in Colman’s mouth that he’s already helped win her an Oscar for “The Favourite.”) Theo and Ivy open the film skewering each other at marriage counseling, only to be aghast when the therapist advises them to split up. For a while, they stick together mostly to stick it to her, in defiance of the fact that contempt is the No. 1 indicator of divorce. “In England, we call that repartee,” Theo insists.
You wonder if their jokes keep them from honest communication and then you wonder if Roach, who came to fame as the director of “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Parents,” has ever been afraid of that himself. (For the record, Roach has been married to the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs since 1993 and she here sings two cover songs for the soundtrack, “Happy Together” and “Love Hurts.”)
Mostly, you just enjoy the jokes. Colman, who burst into my awareness in the 2003 TV cringe comedy “Peep Show,” is fantastic throwing jabs around in costume designer PC Williams’ nouveau hipster wardrobe of bold, baggy lines. The actor even does an Ian McKellen impression just because. Yet, the surprise here is Cumberbatch, who seizes his rare opportunity to be flat-out funny, while occasionally rolling over to show Theo’s vulnerable belly. Flirtatiously pouting his lips at Colman, he coos, “How about a three-hour circular argument that goes nowhere?” How about three more Cumberbatch comedies for every awards-baity drama he does?
The story originally satirized materialistic baby boomers stymied by shifting gender roles. Both make interesting time capsules of the traditional man and the liberated woman who revert to smashing fusty china figurines like Neanderthals, although my sticking point with the first movie is that both Roses are too despicable. It’s hard to care about either one once you see how they treat each other’s pets.
But Roach has insightfully made this about people, not societal scapegoats. He and McNamara have changed up nearly everything in this disaster except its vibrations of dread. Since we already know that Theo and Ivy are in for a world of hurt, the film spends much of its running time rewinding to the past to prove how wonderful they could be together — and, more painfully, how sincerely they’ve tried to work out their kinks. We like Cumberbatch and Colman’s Theo and Ivy, even after they’ve become tantrum-throwing twits.
The details of their dissolution — career pressures, childcare clashes, petty jealousies — and its credible tit-for-tat dynamic are discomfitingly relatable. If this version has a larger sociological statement, it’s an indictment of how today’s quest for success is so all-consuming and exhausting that even if you can fit two egos in one house, you probably can’t merge their day planners. In the modern, highly visible, online-viralized game of life, earning money is merely Stage 1. Both Roses are driven to leave their permanent mark on the world.
Meanwhile, their two sets of American friends, Amy and Barry (Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg) and Sally and Rory (Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou), are equally miserable and toxic. All four are such shallow snobs that they can’t imagine why Ivy would want to own Julia Child’s old stove when it’s, well, old. McKinnon’s Amy toggles through obnoxious progressive stereotypes: She’s a self-professed empath who pretends to be in an open marriage to wheedle Theo into bed. Barry, a depressive, gives Samberg a chance to show a deeper level of comic maturity, and also eventually doubles as Theo’s personal attorney. Otherwise, the script prunes the couple’s legal battle down to one scene with Ivy’s viperous lawyer, played by Allison Janney, who brings a rottweiler to the showdown and claims it’s her service animal.
The gags can be silly. There are two vomit scenes and a pratfall where Colman lands on her face. Yet, Roach and his team have put serious effort into their lovely symbology: a shot of Theo glumly walking down an airplane aisle from first class to coach, images of the cold Pacific crashing against rocks that recall his confession of feeling “waves of hatred” toward his wife.
When the film finally gets to its Grand Guignol climax, it rushes through the barbarity, taking no delight in it. I wanted to laugh but realized I’d fallen too much in love with Theo and Ivy, who are both so pitifully certain they’re in the moral right. The schadenfreude is just sad. It stings how much we root for them to kiss and make up. Still, despite the hasty ending, this splashy comedy deserves to woo grown-ups back to the multiplex. The Roses are estranged, but they’ve reunited us with our love for a genre — and it feels so good.
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