★★ (2 out of 4)
Back in 1989, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner turned marriage and divorce into a battlefield in “The War of the Roses,” directed by Danny DeVito to mine every killing barb in the script that Michael Leeson adapted from Warren Adler’s 1981 novel. Turner and Douglas, both terrific at seething hatred amid Reagan-era excess, delineated the conquest of rage over reason with chilling exactitude. They didn’t make the Roses likable, just recognizably real.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman do just the opposite in “The Roses,” the overcrowded, undercooked remake that leaves the word “War” out of the title and defines generic in the way director Jay Roach, working from a script by Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” featuring Colman in her Oscar-winning role), encourages his stars to be so wonderfully appealing (easy for them) that you don’t believe their tacked-on, climactic warfare (with guns) for a minute.
“The Roses” gave me only two things to like: Colman and Cumberbatch, who shine even when the movie collapses around them.
“The Roses” glides by on the dry, British banter that goes down easy in comparison to the combat zone DeVito erected the first time out. Even in the couples therapy session that opens the movie, you can feel the affection between Ivy Rose (Colman) and husband Theo (Cumberbatch). Roach eagerly flashes back to the first meeting between these two Londoners, having sex in a food storage locker (don’t ask).
Zip ahead a decade and the Roses are married, living near San Francisco and the parents of two. His acclaimed work on a maritime museum brings the bucks to buy Ivy the bones of a seafood shack to show off her culinary skills. The place, called We’ve Got Crabs, is a smash. And then, in a plot twist out of “A Star is Born,” Theo loses everything, becoming house husband and father to Hattie (Hala Finley) and Roy (Wells Rappaport) who he turns into fitness freaks while Ivy becomes a celebrity chef and official breadwinner. If you can’t figure out what’s next, you’ve probably never seen a movie or a streaming show, much less read a book.
To distract from the clichés at the center of the plot, the movie is padded with quirky supporting characters. The always welcome Andy Samberg shows up as Theo’s lawyer Barry, who’s married to Amy, played by the reliably funny but wasted Kate McKinnon. Then we have Sally (Zoe Chao) and Rorry (Jamie Demetriou) right out of the handbook for unnecessary characters. Allison Janney has one livewire scene as Ivy’s divorce lawyer, but that’s it for a casting bonus.
Otherwise, Roach spends much time with the building of the couple’s dream house, only so Theo and Ivy can and demolish it and themselves in a big finale that doesn’t land.
When the “The Roses” tries to imitate the 1989 film by pumping up the volume on violent fantasies, it’s too little and too late. At one point, a marriage counselor asks Theo and Ivy to think of 10 things they like about each other. They’re stumped or pretend to be by using humor. “I would rather live with her than a wolf,” says Theo. “The Roses” gave me only two things to like: Colman and Cumberbatch, who shine even when the movie collapses around them.