The War of the Roses

You know a movie is funny when you're by yourself and laughing out loud. This is a hilarious saga of a divorcing couple, both of whom refuse to leave their house.

"The gloves are off," Michael Douglas announces to wife Kathleen Turner, although for the viewer, they had been off for some time. Both stop at nothing to drive the other out.

It's a strange film in a way because it starts out as a love story and slowly builds, as little signs that all is not well in paradise begin to emerge. Once the ugliness starts, there's no stopping it, and the film rapidly becomes a very black comedy.

Turner and Douglas receive able support from a very funny Danny Devito, who also directed, and the wonderful Marianne Sagebrecht, who provides a gentle presence amidst the chaos.

There isn't a plethora of funny lines in "The War of the Roses" (it's just not that kind of comedy), but the blistering cynicism about marriage makes them stand out all the same (the stabbing victim in the hospital claimed most of these). If you want to call this a cautionary tale of divorce, I'm just fine with that. Watching these people bitterly drift apart is uncomfortable, and the filmmakers know this because the whole third act is the literal destruction of everything they've labored so long to build. The absurdity is almost a salve.

It's a comedy, but also dark as hell. The dialogue, on the other hand, that's fantastic.

7/10

A middle-aged affluent couple hit marital problems and start fighting over the ownership of their mansion. This leads to increasing levels of antagonism and borderline sociopathic behaviour.

The War of the Roses is very 80's, very loud and kind of fun. If you want a subtle study of marital breakdown then seek it somewhere else because this most certainly is not it. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner play the warring couple. We follow their story from their first meeting, through the happy early days to the outright marital war that constitutes the end of their relationship. Douglas and Turner are basically let loose on this film to chew the scenery and go cartoonishly over-the-top. And for the most part it's a great deal of fun seeing them do this, as both are very capable actors who can play mildly deranged very convincingly. I felt, however, that the film lost a bit of steam in its final section. As the pair went increasingly berserk in their antics, the film lost me a bit. Having said that, it is a funny film at times and it's quite a bit of fun watching both principal actors going hell for leather. It's probably a film that people going through a divorce can relate to best. It most probably will give them a few ideas.

Gavin D'Amato (Danny DeVito) is an expert divorce attorney as he recounts the case that drove him to restart smoking. Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas) met Barbara (Kathleen Turner) as they battle over an antique Japanese carving in the rainy last day of the season in Nantucket. They get together that day. They get married. They have a couple of kids. He becomes a successful lawyer. She gets her dream house. However they slowly drift apart. Little irritants creep into their relationship. He works too much. She gets tired of her empty life. She's angry at him and he doesn't know why. Their fairy tale marriage deteriorates into an acrimonious divorce. Through a loophole, he forces his way back into the house.

This is a dark comedy walking a fine line. I'm not sure if it doesn't stray over the line. It is so dark at times that it becomes uncomfortably unfunny. Then it snaps back with big laughs once in awhile. Danny DeVito is pushing hard visually to create something interesting and dark. The second half of the movie is where the couple starts on a course of tit for tat. It hits some dark comedic tones. The two angry combatants are so serious that it's hard to laugh at them. It is really better to see this as a dark cautionary tale rather than a funny comedy.

The premise is simple enough: a moderately wealthy couple—whose last name is Rose—decides to get divorced after many years of marriage. But neither of them wants to give up their house, and both remain living in it, getting on each other's nerves as they deliberately and maliciously annoy and attack each other, each in an attempt to get the other to give up and leave.

It's exactly the sort of film I don't normally enjoy, where two equally detestable parties go back and forth trying to one up each other with ridiculous shenanigans that are rarely funny and never make up for the ninety minutes of wasted time. It reminds me of dumb comedy films like Duplex—which pits neighbor against neighbor—and Are We There Yet?, in which Ice Cube goes up against his new girlfriend's mischievous kids. These sorts of films aren't typically my cup of tea, but it wasn't my turn to pick the movie, so I just sat back and watched.

And then a funny thing occurred. Almost immediately, I got drawn into the story. That wasn't supposed to happen, but it did, and I was pleasantly surprised. I normally don't even care for Danny DeVito as a director, probably due to the fact that he made the awful Duplex, which I mentioned earlier. I mean, I did enjoy Matilda, but that was a family movie that I watched as a kid. War of the Roses was something else entirely, and despite my efforts, I couldn't help but enjoying it.

It tells the story in a different way than others of its kind. Things unfold naturally and totally believably. Sure, some of the stunts that the characters pull reach the same levels of ridiculousness as in those other films that I didn't like, but here we get the impression that it's done for the sake of the story, rather than for just another cheap laugh. Instead of yawning, I was wide sitting wide-eyed on the edge of my seat. It's not just funny; it's also very real and poignant, especially considering the fact that most of us know someone who's had a really tough divorce and it's easy to see how things could go just as bad as they do in War of the Roses.

And, unlike most of these kinds of movies and apart from my expectations, we actually end up caring about the characters, despite their overabundance of flaws. They're both selfish idiots, which makes the story so much better, but they're still believable and very well acted. From moment to moment we find ourselves siding with each one. Neither of them could be called true protagonists, as they constantly antagonize each other, but there's a balance of both deserved animosity and loathsomeness between them that is very well done. They got good actors to play these roles, and they play them so well that we almost don't notice that it could have been much worse in the hands of anyone else.

The whole story is told by Danny DeVito, who plays a divorce attorney who is telling it as a warning to a prospective client who never says a word during the entire film. And the ending is great. I won't spoil it, but trust me, it's a good one. This definitely isn't the best film I've seen, but it's certainly the best of its kind, and makes me reconsider my attitude toward this type of film. I just thought the whole idea was bad, but it turns out that it's often just done very poorly.