Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman should break up with the agents who sent them The Roses

film review

The Roses

Directed by Jay Roach

Written by Tony McNamara, based on the novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman and Andy Samberg

Classification 14A; 105 minutes

Opens in theatres Aug. 29

The best, most vicious joke in Jay Roach’s adaptation of Warren Adler’s 1981 novel The War of the Roses is that the new film is so heavily banking on audiences’ familiarity, and perhaps even undying love, of Danny DeVito’s 1989 version of the tale.

That long-ago satire, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a divorcing couple who would give Edward Albee’s George and Martha a run for their money, certainly had its admirers back in the day. But it is weirdly, genuinely hilarious that someone deep in the bowels of Holly