The Problem with Adaptations and Changed Times - The Roses (2025)

Right off the bat, I really liked The Roses. A lot. It’s not as dark a comedy as one might be led to believe, but it is farce. This sets it apart from satire by default, and the choices made by Tony McNamara’s script reflect a considerable difference in emphasis from the source material or Danny DeVito’s classic The War of the Roses. I mention this because The Roses is a solid piece of entertainment that works on its own, but seems to suffer in comparison with the earlier works.

This points up a problem with adaptations in general. It is often the case that “the book is better than the movie”. There are exceptions, the notable ones that come to my mind are King’s The Shining and Kubrick’s adaptation; both are fine - and one is a genuinely great work of cinema - as they are; American Psycho; where the film was much livelier, coherent and funny than the novel. Barry Giffords’ Wild at Heart and Lynch’s adaptation are both on equal tier to me. You get the idea.

But what happens when you haven’t read the source novel or you’re not familiar with earlier adaptations that are well-regarded works in their own rights? I’ve only read the first fifty or so pages of Frank Herbert’s Dune which impressed me but I haven’t picked up again to finish, Lynch’s film has a hazy impression in my mind; I really don’t remember much about it beyond the imagery. I like Villaneuve’s adaptation, but do I consider it a masterpiece or a great work of cinema? I think it has some great elements in it and even moments of something like greatness, but overall, it doesn’t completely cohere for me and I don’t know that the characters really read as terribly interesting or rich characters, so much as well-performed archetypes or sussed-out images.

Because I’m not really that familiar with either the source novel and I don’t really much of the earlier adaptation, I had to take Dune on its own, and as I say, it’s. fine. I liked it, and so on. 

I could go on, but what I do like about cinematic adaptations isn’t the fidelity to the source, but what does the film do with the ideas or thematic structure of, say, a novel or short story. Bergman famously said that film has nothing to do with literature and while I still reserve a bit of disagreement, I understand what he was driving at, and I think it’s wise to keep the master’s statement in mind.

We know that comparisons are odious. The Roses is getting dragged for not being as dark as either the earlier film or the novel. The characters seem to have had edges sanded off and a choice has been made to see Theo and Ivy as victims of catastrophic misunderstanding and an overwhelming lack of communication, as opposed to a young couple driven by greed with questionable moral compasses whose destruction was seeded in their characters. 

The earlier film and novel skewered the “greed is good” mentality of the 80’s yuppy and there is a reason why Theo in those works is a lawyer where here, he’s an architect. McNamara and Jay Roach have gotten flak for their take on the material, but I’d argue this is a mistaken read on the movie.

As I opened with, they are working with farce, not satire. As such, we can relate to the principles and relate to their lack of really listening to each other or really working through their issues. Well, hell, if they had, we wouldn’t have the movie. 

I think it is funny that some people find the movie dark. I suppose it is, but it’s genuinely so good-nature in its delivery of those more acidic elements that the darkness is more lightly comedic than delivered with genuine spite, despite what the characters might say.

We aren’t really asked to take sides, either. To be clear, Theo gave Ivy the money to start her restaurant and she becomes the breadwinner when he’s hung out to the dry as the architect of a building that caved in on itself in the face of a violent storm. We are told by both principles that each is battered emotionally by the other’s neediness or the other’s ego or any number of complaints they have about each other, but they really seem to still love each other too much (and this, even after they try to kill each other, maybe especially then, because they can’t really go through with it). 

In a lot of ways, this is sort of what I have in mind when I talk about the subversion of the rom-com genre. We have a meet-cute, we have the romance, and we tag along for the dissolution of the relationship, and it’s genuinely funny. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch are in great form and that might have proved a problem for some people; they’re almost too good at showing nuance and shading of their characters, rendering them relatable as opposed to hateful, shrewish, exposed ganglia.

There are plot contrivances like having the kids raised by Theo to become athletic prodigies to be able to attend some school or something not really very well explained on scholarship, to get them out of the house so Theo and Ivy can move into the last act with no restraints. 

One of the highlights was a dinner with their respective friends that is supposed to be remarkably uncomfortable, but everyone attacks the dialog with such gusto, it was difficult for me to feel too at odds. McNamara gave everyone some juicy lines, but the dinner scene is a showcase for Cumberbatch and Colman to chew words and scenery like a full course meal. What I’d give to see them do Noel Coward or hell, The Taming of the Shrew. 

The supporting cast is used sparingly, which is smart because each of them are seasoned comedians that could walk away with a scene if they were allowed to do so (I swear to God, Kate McKinnon is the stealth MVP here). Samberg plays Theo’s pal who is tapped to represent Theo at the early divorce proceedings and as Barry, adds another hapless, well-meaning doofus to his portfolio. The face-off between him acting as a divorce lawyer against Allison Janney (who just made this movie better just by being there) is another tight little set-piece that ends verging on sentimentality when Barry tells Theo that he thinks Theo and Ivy are still in love and should give the marriage another go.

Zoe Chao and Jamie Demetriou play former colleagues of Theo’s who didn’t really read as a couple to me until the dinner scene and both brought wry smiles whenever they showed up. Ncuti Gatwa and Sunita Mani are swell as Ivy’s head waiter and sous chef respectively. All these folks provide the kind of support the two stars rely on to drive this enterprise forward.

Interestingly, I don’t find the enterprise to be terribly rich in a thematic sense. There’s no commentary on marriage necessarily, or on how relationships are subject to dissolution, or how communication can falter with disastrous results or so on, yet it touches on all that, just not much deeper than the surface. Any depth comes from the performances and I give credit to Roach who has very often had the sense to let his actors do their work. And yes, that includes Mike Meyers in the first Austin Powers flick, Ben Stiller and Robert Deniro in Meet the Parents, and of course, Bryan Cranston in Trumbo. It helps that he has Florian Hoffmeister as his DP, whose work in Târ, Pachinko, and Antlers is exceptional (and no, I haven’t seen the fourth season of True Detective, but it’s on my list). 

Altogether, take The Roses for what it is; a light, tight well-constructed example of farce in a landscape of often vapid romantic comedies.