I love a romantic comedy, especially with a heartwarming happy ending. However, I am not against romantic movies that end disastrously. I knew before I watched The Roses that it was a movie about a marriage falling apart. I did not expect a happy ending.
Nonetheless, I didn’t foresee that the film would devastate me as much as it did. This may be because I have never seen The War of the Roses. The original could have clued me in on what to expect with this reimagining. Now that I have survived the rollercoaster that is The Roses, I am glad I had no prior expectations. The movie perfectly crippled my soul.
Warning: The Roses Spoilers are ahead. Proceed with caution.
The Roses Is Hilarious, But Completely Heartbreaking
The Roses is probably best classified as a black comedy. It finds humor in the topic of losing the love of your life. Sure, that can be funny in hindsight. Perhaps 20 years from now, someone will look back on their divorce as just a humorous moment in their life, rather than something that nearly broke them. Sometimes the first spouse isn’t the one, and someone finds love again. However, before any of these maybes can happen, the reality of divorce is crushing.
Most people don’t get married with the intention of leaving or ending their relationships. Marriage is an act of hope. Therefore, divorce can feel like a betrayal, loss, failure, grief, and despair. Divorce isn’t often funny, but life in general has lots of humor to it. Therefore, any tragedy can become a comedy, and sometimes divorce is just that: a tragic comedy.
What makes The Roses so funny is Tony McNamara's strong script. It’s a lot of sharp writing about the complex dynamics of married couples. Romantic pairs can be brilliant and charming together. They can also be cringey, combative, and nuclear under certain situations. The movie captures the complexities of many couples in funny and dark ways. I loved the Roses together, so I found their breakup a hard lesson.
The Movie Starting With Their Happy Times Made It Hard To Accept Their Ending
Like many great breakup movies, The Roses starts with the happy times. It almost makes you forget that Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy (Olivia Colman) will eventually end the relationship, or at least attempt to end it. You’re so caught up in the bliss that you can’t imagine that this marriage will end. It works so well because it makes you delusional and hopeful that love (especially enduring love, happy love) can conquer all. In reality, a lot of love is limited.
The unconditional has conditions. Theo and Ivy seem so perfect together, and their relationship takes some hits, but they can work it out, right? This is where my hopefulness causes me problems. Theirs became a breakup that’s hard to get over because they seem fated, powerful together, and likable.
They’re so enjoyable together that it becomes the main issue. I ignored who they had transformed into and how the relationship didn’t work in its new form. My attachment to the happily married version made it easy to mourn this relationship. I was attached to Ivy and Theo, the couple who balanced each other, so I didn’t want to see it end. This allowed me to feel what they felt. The marriage was so good at one point, which made it hard to swallow that it couldn’t be fixed.
Maybe it could have, but it was destined to all blow up and end.
The Final Half Being So Over-The-Top Works Because It Let Me Forget My Sadness For A Bit
The story turns into a true war/battle movie at the end. They become so vicious towards each other and even attempt murder. It’s insane. This over-the-top behavior becomes very funny to watch. I think this makes it one of the best movies of 2025, or at least among the best comedies, because you can’t help but experience a form of shock, but also enjoy the hilarity.
Once the Roses decide to divorce, the film could have taken a somber turn as we watched this decade-plus love story come to an end. It's a heartbreaking love story that feels like it’s ending too soon. Instead, we’re left astonished by the extremes they go to to win this house, all for a sense of control and a hollow victory.
This level of extremity allows us to forget our pain and just laugh at how quickly everything becomes high octane. The movie almost reaches cartoon levels of insanity with how many devious things Theo and Ivy do to one another. The tonal shift is a smart choice because the first half makes you adore their relationship, only to take it away. The second half allows you to mourn with a bit of a smile.
You cannot cry if you’re too busy laughing.
The Roses Brutally Depicts Losing Your Happy Home. It Feels Too Real At Times.
The Roses is a profound movie about breakups because it feels a bit too real at times. When Theo tells Ivy that his experience with the whale made him realize he didn’t want to waste his life with her, I felt like he slapped me.
I felt all the pain of that cruel, but true, statement. This story is all about how we sometimes end up hurting the ones we love the most. Love can make us heartless. It’s when that starts to happen that maybe it’s time to leave the relationship.
But, as stated earlier, it shows us Theo and Ivy’s happy times, and that makes accepting the end harder. This also makes The Roses' ending clever because sometimes the only way to truly let someone go is in death. People break up, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they completely let go. They may still think of that person occasionally or carry the weight of the loss forever.
Theo and Ivy die together, which in a way is romantic, but it’s also sad because they’re still kind of holding on to hope when they die. They do horrible things to each other before considering reconciling. The relationship is dead, and now so are they.
The Roses Also Works Because You Can See The Bad And Good With Both Main Characters, So I Wasn’t On Anyone’s Side
I would start off being horrified by what one person did, then the other would do something equally horrific. It was hard to accept how cruel they became versus how kind they were to each other at the start. Sadly, I think this is a realistic portrayal of relationships. Love can get ugly.
Theo and Ivy, overall, are kind and caring people. It’s apparent in their children and their friendships, even in how they used to teach each other. The downfall of their romance leads to them becoming unrelentingly cruel to one another. The line between love and hate blurs so much that cruelty seems normal and acceptable.
The Roses is a brutally honest (but hilarious) portrayal of the darkness that can come with a breakup.
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