Why So Blu?

The Roses (Blu-ray Review)

Sometimes a movie walks in wearing a familiar face but still manages to charm you anyway. The Roses is exactly that sort of film — a modern reimagining of Warren Adler’s The War of the Roses that knowingly treads on recognizable ground while finding its own bittersweet, often funny rhythm. With Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman leading the way, Jay Roach delivers a glossy marital meltdown that feels both classically nasty and surprisingly heartfelt.

Film ★★★★☆

A Story of Love, Ambition, and Escalating Pettiness

The setup is simple: Ivy (Colman) and Theo (Cumberbatch) fall in love quickly, build a picture-perfect life, and then quietly begin collecting resentments they never bother to unpack. Their marriage doesn’t explode outright; it erodes slowly, shaped by small slights, mismatched expectations, and the growing sting of unspoken frustration. Ivy’s rise as a celebrated chef and entrepreneur becomes the turning point, especially as Theo’s once-steady professional foothold begins to wobble. Roach captures their unraveling with a mix of sharp-edged humor and genuine ache, creating a portrait of two people who once adored each other but now weaponize that history with startling creativity.

What makes the story work is that the film adds emotional shading that many modern dark comedies gloss over. Even as the conflict intensifies and the pranks become crueler, you’re aware that real human vulnerability still pulses beneath all the chaos.

Colman and Cumberbatch: A Battle of Brilliant Performances

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch anchor the film with a chemistry that feels deeply lived-in from the first scene. Colman gives Ivy a complex mix of ambition, insecurity, and simmering anger, making her both formidable and relatable. Cumberbatch approaches Theo with a wounded charm that gradually collapses into bitterness, and he plays that emotional descent with precision.

Together, they elevate every moment, even the pettiest arguments. Their performances give the film its weight, its humor, and its sense of tragic inevitability. It becomes impossible not to feel invested in their downfall, even while laughing at the absurdity of it.

How It Stacks Up to the Novel

Warren Adler’s novel remains a cold-blooded piece of marital satire, dissecting spite and possessiveness with surgical precision. Roach honors the spirit of that material, but he injects more warmth and psychological nuance than the book ever attempted. The film pays closer attention to identity, career imbalance, and emotional burnout, making the conflict feel more grounded in contemporary pressures.

Readers devoted to the novel’s brutal clarity may wish the movie was darker, but the added empathy gives the film its own voice. It becomes less of a cautionary tale and more of a character study about how small resentments snowball when neither partner knows how to hit pause.

The Shadow of the 1989 DeVito Classic

Any new adaptation inevitably faces the towering presence of Danny DeVito’s 1989 The War of the Roses, which embraced out-and-out black comedy with gleeful ferocity. That film was bold, outrageous, and operatic in its cruelty, largely by design. Roach takes the opposite approach, leaning into a more grounded sense of humor that favors sly jabs over broad slapstick.

Instead of cartoonishly extreme battles, the new film focuses on everyday grievances that gradually tip into madness. The dryness of the humor, paired with a more emotionally textured tone, sets this version apart. It doesn’t try to outdo the 1989 film; it simply chooses a different lane. The result may surprise viewers expecting a near-remake, but the change in style works more often than it doesn’t.

What Works Best

The film’s strongest element is unquestionably its lead performances, which give the story far more emotional resonance than one might expect from such a familiar premise. The production design adds to that impact, allowing the couple’s home to evolve from a domestic sanctuary into a carefully staged battleground. Roach’s tonal control keeps the story elegant even when the characters behave appallingly, and the updated focus on modern ambition and identity adds layers that feel relevant rather than forced. These choices collectively lift the film above a simple retread.

Where It Stumbles

The film isn’t without rough edges. Some supporting characters drift in and out without much purpose, leaving the more talented comedic actors little to do beyond quick appearances. At times, the screenplay hesitates between emotional sincerity and sharper satire, creating a slight tonal wobble. Still, even when the film feels pulled between genres, its core — the marriage at the center — stays compelling enough to keep everything afloat.

Video ★★★★★

NOTE: Stills are provided for promotional use only and are not from the Blu-ray disc.

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Region: A
HDR: N/A
Layers: BD-50

Clarity and Detail:
The Roses delivers a clean, finely textured 1080p presentation that highlights the film’s upscale production design. Close-ups benefit from crisp facial detail, polished surfaces look immaculate, and the film’s increasingly chaotic household retains sharp visual definition even as objects begin to, well… relocate unexpectedly.

Depth:
Depth is consistently strong, with layered interiors and warmly lit kitchen and office spaces offering a sense of dimensionality. The film uses shallow focus and elegant blocking, and the transfer preserves these visual choices with impressive smoothness.

Black Levels:
Black levels are stable and satisfyingly deep, with no crushing during the dimly lit arguments or late-evening confrontations. Shadow detail holds up nicely, allowing subtle background textures to remain visible even when the mood darkens.

Color:
Color reproduction leans naturalistic, giving the couple’s stylish home and Ivy’s culinary world a warm, inviting palette. The Blu-ray captures these tones with accuracy and saturation that never strays into exaggeration. As tensions escalate, the film’s cooler hues also translate smoothly and consistently.

Flesh Tones:
Flesh tones look true to life, neither too ruddy nor overly softened. Colman and Cumberbatch’s complexions, often shown in tight emotional close-ups, appear authentic with healthy differentiation under varied lighting conditions.

Noise and Artifacts:
The encode remains solid throughout the film with minimal visible noise. There are no distracting compression artifacts, banding, or edge enhancement. Even the busiest scenes maintain stability, making this a clean and reliable presentation overall.

Audio ★★★★☆

Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD MA 5.1, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish

Dynamics:
The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track offers a lively and well-controlled dynamic range that suits the film’s blend of sharp dialogue, domestic chaos, and occasional bursts of score. Quiet, simmering tension shifts smoothly into louder moments without distortion, giving the mix a confident sense of escalation that mirrors the characters’ unraveling relationship.

Height:
N/A

Low Frequency Extension:
Bass is used sparingly but effectively. The LFE channel supports bursts of music, door slams, and escalating physical confrontations with just enough weight to add impact without calling attention to itself. It’s subtle, but fitting for a film driven more by tension than spectacle.

Surround Sound Presentation:
Surround channels are steady contributors throughout, opening up the couple’s home with ambient noise, background chatter, and the quieter environmental details that ground the film’s world. Moments of conflict and domestic mischief are nicely punctuated by rear-channel activity, creating a light but engaging sense of space. Nothing here is showy, but the mix is immersive in a clean, understated way.

Dialogue:
Dialogue is the star of the track, and the mix treats it with care. Vocals are clear, balanced, and consistently intelligible even during heated arguments or overlapping lines. Colman’s softer inflections and Cumberbatch’s sharper exchanges both come through naturally without being drowned out by the score or ambient effects.

Extras ★★☆☆☆

Bonus materials on The Roses Blu-ray disc are average at best, but that’s to be expected in this day and age. The Roses comes home on Blu-ray with a slipcover and digital code!

Bonus Features:

• A House to Fight For (HD; 6:55) Not as advertised, but more of an extra about the production design of the film.
• Bloopers (HD; 1:55)
• The Roses: An Inside Look (HD; 2:33) Something we used to see back in the day on HBO to fill time before the movies would air. Now, they call this a making-of.  Not even 3 minutes, and not really anything revelatory.
• Comedy Gold (HD; 1:46) – Another bonus masquerading as a featurette, but something more like a second batch of gags.

Summary ★★★★☆

Final Thoughts

The Roses may not overhaul its source material, but it offers a polished and engaging reinterpretation that stands comfortably on its own. It’s funny, it’s sharp, and it carries a surprising emotional undercurrent that gives the story renewed life. Roach respects the legacy of both Adler’s novel and the DeVito film without simply replicating either. What emerges is a thoughtful, stylish, and very watchable marital war story anchored by two exceptional performances.

If you come for the escalating chaos, you’ll find plenty to enjoy. If you come for Colman and Cumberbatch, you’ll walk away more than satisfied.

The Roses is NOW AVAILABLE on Blu-ray!

Click HERE to Buy a copy of the Blu-ray

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