Film reviews: The Roses, Splitsville, and Twinless
A happy union devolves into domestic warfare, a couple's open marriage reaps chaos, and an unlikely friendship takes surprising turns
The Roses
Directed by Jay Roach (R)
★★
"Is it funnier? Mostly no," said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. But in this second screen adaptation of the 1981 novel The War of the Roses, co-stars Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch "put their own vinegary spin" on the divorce tale that Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas brought to theaters in 1989. If you admire Brits' ability to engage in withering repartee, "you couldn't ask for a more skilled demonstration."
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Alas, the movie built around Colman and Cumberbatch proves "too broad and tonally erratic," said Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. Despite the stars' chemistry, their characters, British ex-pats Ivy and Theo Rose, remain "cartoonish ciphers." She's a chef intoxicated with her newfound fame at the same time that her alpha-male husband has been wounded by a career downfall, and director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents, Austin Powers) shows no feel for the kind of sophisticated adult humor a story about poisoned love truly requires.
Meanwhile, Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg are wasted in "sitcom-y" roles as friends enduring their own marriage problems. For "much of the movie," dry British wit carries the proceedings, said Brian Truitt in USA Today. Credit the dialogue of Tony McNamara, who also wrote The Favourite and Poor Things. But Ivy and Theo are headed for a climactic duel, and "rather than being an entertaining train wreck," as it was in 1989, this version of the fight "undermines all the good and thoughtful stuff that came before, doing the couple dirtier than they ever could to each other."
Splitsville
Directed by Michael Angelo Covino (R)
★★★
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Splitsville, this week's other new comedy about marriages in tumult, "starts with what's essentially a test," said David Fear in Rolling Stone. In the movie's first five minutes, which wrap together a front-seat sex act, a fatal crash, and talk of divorce, co-writers and co-stars Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin are "letting viewers know right away that things are about to get more than a little filthy and a wee bit darker than your average indie-cutesy quirkfest." Spurned by his wife, Marvin's Carey soon sleeps with his best friend's wife after learning the couple has an open marriage, leading to a fight between the men that achieves a "Looney Tunes–style level of ridiculousness."
By comparison, the roles of Covino's and Marvin's more famous female co-stars are "drastically underwritten," said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. Luckily, Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona "do a lot of heavy lifting to keep their shallow characters from fading away," and as both women begin exploring extramarital hookups, Covino and Marvin "often allow their characters to be the butt of the joke."
Beyond that, the duo behind 2020's The Climb has a knack for sight gags that "would shame the makers of the recent Naked Gun reboot," said Ben Kenigsberg in The New York Times. Sure, their humor is "not for every taste, nor will Splitsville satisfy viewers who demand strict psychological plausibility." Still, it's "simply funny" and, in the end, "even kind of sweet."
Twinless
Directed by James Sweeney (R)
★★★
"You'll begin Twinless with basic expectations, and you'll end it with your mouth agape," said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. James Sweeney's "compulsively addictive" Sundance award-winner "begins innocently enough," with Sweeney and former teen star Dylan O'Brien playing two men, one gay and one straight, who connect at a support group for adults whose twins have died. But this surprising dramedy, which hits theaters on Sept. 5, "soon transforms into something more psychologically sinister," and even viewers who always know where a screenplay is headed "will find themselves refreshingly behind this filmmaker's razor-sharp mind."
When the first big rug-pull arrives, it's "delivered with such confidence and style" that we're unsure what the writer-director may do next, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. Spoilers should be avoided, but it's safe to report that the perspective shifts from O'Brien's Roman to Sweeney's Dennis, who harbors surprising secrets. From there, Sweeney the director "plays with elements of a slippery Hitchcockian thriller while still reminding us that this is a film about the awful weight of grief."
I was initially annoyed, said Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair, that Sweeney portrays Dennis as wanting more from Roman than friendship, painting the gay condition as one of frustrated longing. "But Twinless works past that sometimes-noxious cliché and finds the truth at its core." The result is "a disarmingly assured film" that "announces the ascendancy of a thrilling filmmaker."