Remakes, like a marriage, can be a beautiful union. Find the right material, a new take, and the right performers, and old stories can be made new again.
But also like a marriage, a remake can be a toxic thing.
Luckily, The Roses, Jay Roach's redo of the Danny DeVito-directed film and the Warren Adler novel that inspired it, falls somewhere in between. Critics have begun to weigh in on the film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, who despite delivering typically strong performances, aren't able to fully find a peaceful resolution.
"Much is made in The Roses of the electricity generated between a couple by the caustic British barbs they exchange, something that comes out as blunt ridicule when a Californian friend tries it on her partner," writes David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter. "You couldn’t ask for a more skilled demonstration of how it should be done than the deliciously withering repartee lobbed back and forth by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as Theo and Ivy Rose, whose union spirals from bliss into mutual destruction in this dark comedy about marital collapse. The lead actors’ combative chemistry is what keeps Jay Roach’s overcrowded remake zingy even when it threatens to turn from savage to sour."
But strong lead performances from Colman and Cumberbatch can't fully save the film, which according to some critics are calling out material that doesn't fully capitalize on the actors doing their best to deliver it.
"These gags are so stale you can practically smell them, and The Roses’ rancorous repartee isn’t better," writes the Daily Beast's Nick Schager. "Cumberbatch and Colman are well-suited for this conflict, and the clash between their stiff-upper-lip Englishness and seething ugliness seems ripe for exploitation. Yet the headliners are undone by material that lacks cleverness, resorting to lame bits involving setting things on fire, food fights, and two separate bouts of puking."
The uneven of The Roses carries over into the supporting roles, including a character played by Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon, The Wrap's William Bibbiani found to be mismatched for the movie.
"The actors are funny. Well, most of them are. Cumberbatch and Colman get a kick out of each other, turning every other line into a gem," Bibbiani writes. "Andy Samberg tones it down admirably as Theo’s best friend, and later divorce lawyer, who’s come to terms with his own miserable marriage. But for some reason Kate McKinnon, who plays Samberg’s horny and straying wife, is in a completely different production. Everyone else is in a sharp, dark comedy. McKinnon is in a Saturday Night Live sketch, and not one of the good ones. It’s as though Jay Roach was afraid his movie was too smart or subtle, and told McKinnon to ham it up, for fear that crass American audiences wouldn’t understand The Roses was a comedy unless someone got hit by a banana cream pie."
The potential inherent to the project echoes across reviews — most of which land somewhere in the middling ground — and like The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, most critics yearn for a version that lives up to their romantic ideal.
"Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, the two most prestigious English screen actors in the world, resoundingly butt heads in this feel-bad movie; it is oddly, but not uninterestingly, composed throughout in feelgood romcom style. In casting terms, this is a Borg-McEnroe 10-set tie-break leading to play being suspended even as the leads bring every microlitre of their technique to the game," Bradshaw writes. "The movie has a high gloss and sheen, like something by Nancy Meyers, which creates a diverting disconnect, yet it flinches from the recognisable, tragicomic reality of a bad marriage."
The meh critical notices are reflected on the review-aggregation sites. The Roses has a middling 63 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 59 percent "mixed/average" score on Metacritic.
