Harvard law student Oliver Rose (played by Michael Douglas) starts a relationship with a woman named Barbara (played by Kathleen Turner) and even after building a seemingly perfect life with kids and a lavish house, cracks start to form spurned by Barbara’s unfulfillment as a housewife and Oliver’s workaholism and controlling behavior.
What start as small grievances devolve into truly bitter resentment, causing both to file for a divorce that can’t be fully put through as both want the house. Not wanting to see the other win, the two try to force the other out by any means necessary (even stooping to aggressive tactics), and with everyone around them (including their children), seeing the monsters they’ve become, these former lovers would rather kill themselves than admit the other is right.
Based on a novel written by Warren Adler and taking its name from the real world war about feuding English houses fighting for ownership of the throne during the 13th century, THE WAR OF THE ROSES is an insane, chaotic, constantly escalating experience that displays Danny DeVito’s wonderfully deranged directing style, but is fully rounded out by a great script, very entertaining leading performances and a twisted sense of humour that leads to many uncomfortable snickers.
Black comedy is fun to watch unfold and divorce feels like the perfect subject matter to work with the genre. Being a messy situation that can be blown out of proportion, the idea for this story is just the right amount of composed and ridiculous to let people get invested in the tragedy of a seemingly happy couple falling apart but also get swept up in the multitude of ways the two try to hurt each other in drastically bitter fashions. You can see what DeVito saw in this source material, and he picked a lot of the right people to get the most out of it, getting James L. Brooks as a producer, hiring Michael J. Leeson to be the film’s screenwriter, and using his past connections with Turner and Douglas to get them to lead the picture.
While this scenario has a lot of comedic potential, it could wear out its welcome as the story format almost feels repetitive around the second half, but the film’s sharp pace and surprisingly solid scripting keep things moving at a constant rate and appropriately builds upon each scenario so that things never get stale.
The opening is wonderfully cruel with how it nicely establishes these two as a regular couple, the middle has a lot of fun ripping apart that cheery veneer and revealing the boiling resentment hidden within the both of them, and the ending is pure insanity with great gothic imagery, psychotic performances, and a final nail in the coffin that is wonderfully bittersweet. It won’t work for everyone, but for those that are willing to get lost in its insane juvenility, it’ll offer loads of enjoyment.
Danny DeVito definitely had the right idea when he cast Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas as the Roses, as having worked alongside them in the comedy-adventure film, Romancing the Stone, and its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, he must’ve known how much of fun it would be to take the two who played a sunny, classic couple, and watch them become the most boorishly aggressive, toxic couple.
The results are instantly effective, with both Douglas and Turner doing fantastic at playing a typical romantic pairing that takes jabs in good jest and twisting them into self-indulgent man-children who go to extreme lengths in order to one-up the other. The intensity of their deliveries before and after they let their true selves shine is great to witness, the quick unfiltered dialogue leads to some great cutting lines and interactions, and while you do feel the tragedy of these two losing their once meaningful spark, the stuff they do to hurt the other proves it never would’ve worked between them.
While most of the supporting cast don’t bring much to the story, they are played by colourful actors who add to the environment and tone. Danny DeVito acts as a nice stable presence as the narrator of the film, Marianne Sägebrecht as a live-in nurse for the Roses is innocently sweet and gets some good moments reacting to the chaos, Sean Astin and Heather Fairfield as the Rose children don’t play as large a part as you’d imagine, but their brief moments are nice windows into the growing divide between both parties, and even the pets for this family are an obvious but effective metaphor for the internal separation between husband and wife (and how they’re used in the growing feud is truly twisted). It’s not a movie that really has an extended cast (which is a bit of a shame given how much fun the leads are) but it’s only a minor complaint.
Probably the most fun aspect of this film is how it looks, as DeVito’s clear love for dark twisted material and quirky, experimental ideas combines into a visual style that knows how to be unsettling and strange, but also weird and wildly interesting. There’s a lot of gothic influence involved in the framing, editing, coloration and especially the shadow work, but with that additional silly factor, it forms into a style that is very much his own. Since this film is funnier for the actions rather than its dialogue, its presentation is going to factor into that, and the cinematography by Stephen H. Burum is incredibly well handled, with every shot, angle and pan feeling purposefully positioned in order to fully capture the mood or attitude of every scene. The editing by Lynzee Klingman can be slow, but the occasional fantastic transition makes it feel intentional, and when paired with the great imagery and camera work, it results in an all-around great looking film.
The production design by Ida Random almost takes on a character of its own, especially in regard to the main house. The rest of the world has this artificial prop-like look that makes everything feel strange and unnatural, but the manor is a great setting for this story, starting off as a decadent, picturesque home, before turning into a stone-coloured death trap that feels suffocating to be in. The glassy floors and mute colours act in nice contrast with the more vibrant outside, the various knick-knacks and ornaments make for nice set dressing yet are extra useful during the climax when used as weapons, and the way it functions both as a bargaining chip but also a symbol for their own vanity is perfectly in-your-face.
The musical score by David Newman has an elegant flowing quality that works nicely in a romantic light, yet the hint of melancholy and even bouncy lunacy rounds all the film’s facets into it in a very nice fashion. Even the intro sequence created by Saul Bass and Elaine Bass, perfectly epitomizes the tone and vibe of the film without even needing to spell it out.
It’s a shame that Danny DeVito didn’t direct that many movies, but it’s nice to look back and see what he brought as a filmmaker, and this is easily one of the best places to start.
THE WAR OF THE ROSES was a critical and commercial success of the time, and it seems to still have traction considering a remake has been released in 2025 starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, but it’s hard to imagine how it could top what this film accomplished.
With its stylish direction, very engaging leading performances, enrichingly gothic imagery, and a delightfully disturbed tone, this marital feud is one of the few uncomfortable scenarios you just can’t turn away from.
Editor’s Note : The remake THE ROSES starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman is currently screening in cinemas.
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