On last week’s KVNU For the People Movie Show, I covered THE ROSES, Jay Roach’s modern, marital meltdown comedy starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman. It’s pitched as a contemporary reimagining (not a scene-for-scene remake) of Warren Adler’s material that fueled THE WAR OF THE ROSES—only this time we follow Ivy and Theo Rose as career fortunes flip and the marriage curdles.

Plot, in brief: Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) look picture-perfect until a stormy night flips their trajectories—her culinary ambitions surge while his architecture career tanks. Resentment simmers, pranks escalate, and the domestic battlefield gets meaner (and messier) as they angle for the upper hand.

Who’s in it: Beyond Colman and Cumberbatch, the film packs a killer bench—Andy Samberg, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Sunita Mani, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Demetriou, and Zoë Chao—written by Tony McNamara and directed by Jay Roach for Searchlight Pictures. On paper, that’s comedy gold.

So…why’s it meh? Because most of the big laughs are front-loaded in the trailer, and what’s left plays like familiar beats without the vicious snap this premise needs. The movie nods toward modern roles, ambition, and domestic labor, but the satire rarely cuts; it’s glossy, not savage. I kept thinking about the 1989 film’s acid bite—truly dark, escalating warfare that weaponized the house itself—where the comedy stung and the stakes hurt. THE ROSES feels safer by comparison.

Bottom line: Great leads, stacked supporting cast, a few sharp moments… and yet a shrug overall. If you want the full black-comedy wallop, the ’89 THE WAR OF THE ROSES still earns the crown.

Check out the trailer here or below, along with all the podcasts for the KVNU For The People Movie Show.