‘The Roses’: Tie the knot? Not

“I’d rather live with her than a wolf,” says Benedict Cumberbatch’s Theo in a counselling session at the very start of ‘The Roses’, when asked to say something nice about his wife, Olivia Colman’s Ivy Rose — and you’re hurled straight into the serrated brilliance of British humour.

“One, he has arms,” Ivy snaps back, and you instantly know the dry wit will keep needling you for the next hour and 45 minutes.

But, in classic British fashion, ‘The Roses’ wilts when it prepares for everything, except the spice: a narrative with actual flavour.

Another spin on Warren Adler’s 1981 novel ‘The War of the Roses’, ‘The Roses’ follows architect Theo and chef Ivy through their tumbling, fumbling marriage: two ambitious Brits plonked in scenic coastal California, marinated in sunshine and delusion.

They meet when Theo — bored to catatonia at a work dinner — flees into the restaurant kitchen and stumbles upon a young Ivy. Instead of shooing him out, she unloads her work woes on him (because we must hurry the plot to make room for all the gratuitous beachy B-roll).

She offers him some trout and, in a blink, they decide to move to America; and then “make love” in the walk-in freezer.

Cut to Mendocino, California. Two kids who speak only in precocious one-liners and a fleet of pretentious friends they don’t quite like lace the sunny, beachy not-a-rom-com. Theo slaves over his magnum opus, a museum; Ivy tends to her bistro, called ‘We’ve Got Crabs’ (I chuckled).

Everything stays golden until Theo’s passion project sails — literally — into disaster; and Ivy, at the same time, rockets upward after a shockingly good review.

Now jobless, Theo disciplines the children with army-drill precision, while Ivy jets off to influential dinners (because, kids, success happens overnight!).

Credit where due: the film skewers the latent misogyny in even the most “aware” men — Theo cannot bear his wife’s ascent. And, for her part, hipster Ivy loathes that her children are no longer ‘free-range’.

The film also nails the quiet suffocation of nothingness. Before the cracks show, Ivy tells Theo, “Never leave me, but when you do, kill me on the way out” — and he does: a long, rotting, airless death of two people who mistook mania for matrimonial fuel.

What’s noble is that nothing spectacularly wrong happens; they simply grow apart, clinging — foolishly, humanly — to versions of themselves that don’t exist anymore.

The supporting cast sparkles. Andy Samberg comes armed with his slippery charm; Ncuti Gatwa grounds waiter Jeffrey despite being scripted as a walking gay stereotype; and Kate McKinnon steals the show as Amy, the classic ‘California liberal’ — you know, the kind that buys “peace” T-shirts sewn by kids in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.

To fumble a twice-successful adaptation is almost a feat. The movie’s treatment has fuzzy charm, but the narrative you’re meant to care about keeps barging in. I’d rather watch a two-hour vacation vlog featuring Cumberbatch and Colman.

Roach’s film lands closest to a lobotomy — swinging between feel-good and feel-nothing.