The Roses Review: A Wasted Opportunity Despite Colman and Cumberbatch's Chemistry

The Roses 

Directed by: Jay Roach

Written by: Tony McNamara

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Kate McKinnon

Release Date: August 29, 2025

The Roses (2025), starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, aims for sharp satire but stumbles over lazy writing and implausible storytelling. Here’s why Jay Roach’s latest comedy fails to bloom.

A Comedy Built on a Flimsy Foundation

The Roses asks audiences to accept a setup that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Theo Rose, a world-class architect whose career is destroyed when a storm brings down one of his signature projects: a sailing museum topped with a massive wooden sail that crashes through the structure.

It’s a striking image, sure—but the logic doesn’t hold. Are we really to believe that a wildly successful architect wouldn’t account for basic weather conditions? Add to that the fact that architects design, while engineers and builders execute, and the idea of Theo being solely blamed for this disaster feels like screenwriting corner-cutting.

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Overnight Success, Overnight Failure

If Theo’s implausible fall from grace wasn’t enough, his wife Ivy (Olivia Colman) experiences an equally improbable rise. Her failing seafood restaurant, cheekily named We’ve Got Crabs, becomes an impromptu storm shelter. By sheer coincidence, one of the stranded diners is the world’s most influential food critic. Ivy’s cooking earns her a glowing review, and overnight she’s a culinary star while Theo is a professional pariah.

It’s an amusing contrast, but the lack of plausibility makes it hard to buy. Restaurants on the brink of closure don’t stock enough ingredients to feed a packed house during a storm. These details may seem minor, but they highlight the script’s laziness—problems that could have been fixed with minimal effort.

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Kate McKinnon’s Wasted Talent

One of the strangest missteps is Kate McKinnon’s role. While McKinnon is undeniably talented, her brief, out-of-nowhere appearances feel like filler rather than genuine comedy. In one particularly awkward third-act scene, she pops in, delivers an offbeat line, and vanishes, clearly inserted because director Jay Roach felt the film needed a laugh break.

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Chemistry That Can’t Save the Script

Despite the weak script, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are the movie’s saving grace. Their sharp banter, biting insults, and electric chemistry add genuine spark, especially in their flirtatious meet-cute. For a brief moment, it feels like The Roses might deliver a dark, screwball energy akin to The War of the Roses (1989). Unfortunately, those flashes of brilliance fade fast, leaving a comedy that feels forced and unfocused.

Why is Andy Samberg in this movie? He's filling the role played by Danny Devito in the 1989 version of this story, The War of the Roses, but where Devito felt essential to that film Samberg is awkwardy shoehorned into The Roses. He's supposed to be Benedict Cumberbatch's closest friend but the two have zero chemistry. I do like Andy Samberg but he is dreadfully miscast as a modern day yuppie lawyer. He's also given nothing to work with by a desperately overstuffed and still lazy screenplay. 

Allison Janney, on the other hand, brings it in a cameo as Ivy's divorce lawyer. Where the rest of The Roses flounders, unwilling to fully commit to the nasty tone of the 1989 movue, Janney plays her part as if she should have been cast in place of Olivia Colman. Janney's energy is pure mercenary comic savagery and I loved it. It's about the only thing I love about this otherwise desperately mediocre and inept film. 

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Final Verdict

The Roses is proof that star power and witty dialogue aren’t enough to save a film with a flimsy premise and lazy writing. While Cumberbatch and Colman give it their all, Jay Roach’s direction leans too heavily on contrivances and random gags, resulting in a movie that feels half-baked. Fans of the stars might find a few laughs, but most audiences will leave disappointed.

De-Lovely (2004) — Kevin Kline’s Remarkable Role as Cole Porter

De-Lovely

Directed by: Irwin Winkler

Written by: Jay Cocks

Starring: Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, Jonathan Pryce

Release Date: July 2, 2004

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 out of 5 stars)

Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd shine in De-Lovely, Irwin Winkler’s uneven but heartfelt Cole Porter biopic. A flawed yet elegant musical portrait of love, creativity, and regret.

A Complicated Collaboration Reunited

When director Irwin Winkler and actor Kevin Kline last worked together on Life as a House, the result was an overwrought melodrama that didn’t do either of them favors. So when news broke that they were reuniting for De-Lovely, I wasn’t exactly excited. Winkler’s previous outings — The Net, At First Sight — hardly inspired confidence, and Kline’s recent career, as of 2003, had seemed adrift.

That’s part of what made his performance in De-Lovely so remarkable. Even as Winkler turns in a compromised and uneven musical, Kline glides through the film with wit, poise, and emotional precision, reminding audiences why he’s long been one of Hollywood’s most admired actors.

A Life Told Like a Broadway Show

De-Lovely tells the story of Cole Porter, one of the 20th century’s greatest songwriters. Kline portrays Porter from his youth to his final days, while Ashley Judd plays his wife and creative muse, Linda Lee Porter.

The story unfolds through a clever, if clumsy, device: Porter is guided through his own life by an angel named Gabe (Jonathan Pryce), who stages Cole’s memories like a Broadway production. The idea sounds imaginative — a meta-theatrical reflection of Porter’s own showmanship — but in practice, the conceit never fully gels.

Love, Music, and the Cost of Compromise

Cole meets Linda in Paris, where she helps reignite his creativity after early Broadway setbacks. Their marriage, however, is not built on traditional romance. Porter’s homosexuality was one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets, and De-Lovely only grazes the surface of how this shaped their unusual but deeply affectionate relationship.

The film moves through Paris, Milan, New York, and finally Hollywood, where Porter’s sophisticated wit often clashed with studio expectations. In one of the film’s best scenes, the cast bursts into “Be a Clown,” illustrating how Porter learned to embrace the contradictions of commercial art.

But for every inspired moment, another subplot gets lost — a brief blackmail story, emotional conflicts, and Porter’s inner turmoil are all introduced, then dropped in favor of celebrity-studded musical numbers.

Pop Stars Meet Porter’s Classics

One of De-Lovely’s biggest gambles is its use of modern pop stars to perform Cole Porter’s timeless songs. Alanis Morissette (“Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love”), Sheryl Crow (“Begin the Beguine”), Elvis Costello (“Let’s Misbehave”), and Robbie Williams (“De-Lovely”) all take the stage.

While these performances are well-intentioned, they underscore a key problem: pop singers and Broadway standards don’t always mix. Their modern phrasing clashes with Porter’s theatrical rhythm. By contrast, Caroline O’Connor (“Anything Goes”) and John Barrowman (“Night and Day”) deliver powerhouse renditions that capture the spirit and precision of Porter’s world.

The casting of pop stars feels like a commercial decision — designed to sell soundtracks more than to serve the story — and it shows.

The Pain Beneath the Perfection

The emotional center of De-Lovely comes after Porter’s devastating horse-riding accident, which crushed his legs. Despite constant pain and surgeries, he continued composing, thanks largely to Linda’s steadfast devotion.

Ashley Judd gives one of her most radiant performances, communicating love, frustration, and heartbreak through pure presence. Kline, meanwhile, channels both Porter’s elegance and melancholy. His Cole is charming, brilliant, and profoundly sad — a man who could express love only through lyrics, never quite able to return the affection he inspired.

Beauty in the Imperfection

De-Lovely suffers from an uneven script and a confused tone — unsure whether it wants to be a surreal musical or a straightforward biopic. Yet the performances by Kline and Judd elevate the film beyond its flaws. Their chemistry gives life to what might otherwise be a hollow tribute.

When you strip away the flashy cameos and showy structure, what remains is a touching portrait of love, pain, and artistry. The film may not be as “de-lovely” as it wants to be, but it is deeply human.

Final Verdict

Despite its clunky direction and distracting gimmicks, De-Lovely stands as a showcase for Kevin Kline’s brilliance and Ashley Judd’s emotional depth. The movie doesn’t always sing, but when it does, it finds a kind of bittersweet harmony that honors Cole Porter’s spirit.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 out of 5 stars)

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977): A Hateful, Sensory Nightmare Masquerading as a Movie

Looking for Mr. Goodbar 

Directed by: Richard Brooks

Written by: Richard Brooks (based on the novel by Judith Rossner)

Starring: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger, William Atherton, Tuesday Weld

Release Date: October 19, 1977

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) is one of the most hateful, chaotic, and misogynistic movies of the 1970s. Despite Diane Keaton’s best efforts, Richard Brooks delivers a cinematic disaster that blames women for their own abuse and murder.

(Just a note, I intended to write a positive review of a Diane Keaton movie in the wake of her passing. This movie was recommended to me as one of her best performances. She's as good as she could be under the circumstances. Apologies to Keaton fans.)

A Film That Punishes Women for Existing

Wow. What a piece of trash.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a sensory nightmare — a film of utter chaos and incoherence. It’s as if Richard Brooks set out to punish both the audience and his lead character, Theresa Dunn, for daring to exist outside of patriarchal norms.

The message? If a woman is sexually liberated and steps away from her family, she’s asking to be taken advantage of, abused, or even murdered. That’s not subtext — that’s the actual takeaway of this movie.

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Diane Keaton Tries to Save a Lost Cause

Diane Keaton plays Theresa, an innocent woman trying to escape her suffocating Catholic family. Her reward for that independence? A string of emotionally and physically abusive men.

Her first boyfriend is a married professor who tells her, post-coitus, “I just can’t stand a woman’s company after I’ve f*ed her.” Charming, right? From there, she meets Tony (Richard Gere), a swaggering sex addict who uses her and disappears. Every relationship is another humiliation.

Between the chaos of her love life, we get scenes of Theresa tenderly teaching deaf children — a transparent attempt by Brooks to “redeem” her for the audience, as if to say, See, she’s not a total whore! It’s moral policing disguised as character development.

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A Gallery of Awful Men

Every man in this movie is an abuser, and yet the movie blames Theresa for their actions. James (William Atherton) starts out as a nice guy — until she rejects him, at which point he becomes obsessed and violent. Then there’s Gary (Tom Berenger), a gay man introduced in a bizarre, incoherent parade sequence who exists solely to embody Brooks’ twisted sense of sexual panic.

By the time Gary snorts cocaine, rapes Theresa, and stabs her to death, the film’s point becomes clear: women who seek sexual freedom are doomed. Brooks frames it as tragedy, but it’s really moral punishment.

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Misogyny and Madness Behind the Camera

Beyond the hateful message, Looking for Mr. Goodbar is simply bad filmmaking. Brooks shoots everything like he’s terrified of silence — televisions blare, radios scream, extras wander across the frame, and the camera jitters as if the operator is drunk.

It’s an exhausting sensory overload, a constant assault on the viewer. The noise isn’t atmosphere; it’s incompetence.

Even Tuesday Weld, playing Theresa’s sister, gets thrown under the bus. The film frames her as a “good girl gone bad” — promiscuous, drugged up, and punished by the story. Every woman in this movie is either a saintly mother or a damned whore. There’s no in-between.

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The Verdict: A Cruel, Hateful Relic

Looking for Mr. Goodbar isn’t just bad — it’s offensive. It’s the kind of movie that pretends to explore sexual liberation while secretly despising it. The story blames women for male violence, then pretends to offer a moral lesson about “dangerous lifestyles.”

This isn’t provocative art — it’s propaganda for repression.

Even Diane Keaton can’t save it. Despite her honest, layered performance, the movie uses her as a punching bag for Brooks’ toxic worldview. The result is an angry, ugly, morally bankrupt mess that deserves to be forgotten.

Final Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ — 1 star for Diane Keaton, 0 for everything else.