utgard14 Well-made but not much fun. This is a dark comedy starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a couple whose relationship takes an ugly turn when she wants a divorce. Danny DeVito co-stars and also directs. It's a very interesting movie, although not particularly enjoyable for my tastes. The characters aren't that likable despite the actors' charms. There's also some mean-spiritedness that made me wish the eventual fate of these two would happen an hour sooner than it does. Large parts of the movie, particularly in the first half, feel a bit like a stage play filmed on old-fashioned sets. There's something quaint about that I like but it's also a little distracting. I can certainly understand why others would like, if not love, this movie. I don't regret watching it but it's something I'll probably never watch again.

James Hitchcock "The War of the Roses" is a film told using that old literary device of the "framework technique". Gavin D'Amato, a divorce lawyer, is discussing case with a client. Realising that relationships between the man and his estranged wife have become very bitter, Gavin decides to tell him a cautionary tale based on the true story of his former partner Oliver Rose. The film then flashes back to Oliver's courtship of, and marriage to, his wife Barbara. Oliver is highly successful in his professional career and is promoted to a partner in his law firm. He, Barbara and their two children appear to be living the American dream in a luxurious house.Their marriage, however, is not faring so well, and Barbara shocks Oliver when she asks him for a divorce. Although he believes that the marriage can still be saved, he reluctantly agrees, but things start to get worse when the couple fall out over the financial arrangements, especially ownership of the house. Neither seems willing to give way on this point, and they begin to wage an ever-deepening war against one another, seeking to destroy first each other's most cherished possessions and then each other's reputations.The film stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner who had earlier acted together in "Romancing the Stone" and its sequel, "The Jewel of the Nile". In one respect Turner might have seemed miscast. The script implies that Oliver and Barbara are around the same age, whereas in reality Turner is ten years younger than Douglas and at 35 was really too young for the part. Barbara, after all, is supposed to have been married for around twenty years and to be the mother of two children in their late teens. This is, however, one piece of apparent miscasting which turned out to be absolutely right. Turner plays Barbara as a force of nature, a sort of deranged fury eaten up with hatred for her husband and absolutely determined to have what she sees as her rights, no matter what the cost. There is no rational reason for her dislike of Oliver; when he asks her why she wants a divorce all can reply is that she has a desire to "smash his face in". At the same time she is sexy enough to make us understand why, for all her spiteful antics, her husband still, in an odd way, is still in love with her- and nobody could do deranged but sexy like Turner as she was to prove in another, later black comedy, "Serial Mom" in which she plays another suburban housewife turned avenging fury. Douglas's Oliver is subtly different. Although he can be just as spiteful as Barbara, we get the sense that he is more sinned against than sinning, a man who has worked hard to provide as good a life as possible for his family only to have his love thrown back in his face by an ungrateful wife. Barbara announces her intention to divorce him when he has just come out of hospital, which seemed particularly cruel. Some of his tricks, such as his insistence in remaining in the house after the couple have split up, seem to be motivated partly by a desire for revenge but also partly by a desire to stay close to the person who has been at the centre of his life for so long. My one complaint would be that he seems too old in the early scenes when he is supposed to be a young student. DeVito is also good as Gavin, desperately caught in the middle of a battle between two people he considers friends. Although it has an ostensibly improving moral about the need for tolerance and mutual understanding in marriage and personal relationships, "The War of the Roses" is essentially a black comedy. It can be seen as a romantic comedy in reverse. Many rom-coms are based around the "Pride and Prejudice" story of how a couple start off by disliking one another and end up by falling in love; this film simply reverses the process. A comedy on this theme could have become very nasty and mean-spirited, but in the hands of Danny DeVito, who directed the film as well as playing Gavin, and of its two stars, it somehow manages to avoid this fate. It is one of the funniest unromantic comedies of the eighties. 8/10

Stefarooh-CPT I caught The War of the Roses in theaters back in '89 when it released and if my memory serves me correct it was over the Christmas period as I distinctively remember festive cheer everywhere in the mall. I was rather surprised when I exited the theater that The War of the Roses should be bundled into a Christmas release schedule when the reality was that the film was rather ruthless and relentless in its depiction of a marriage going sour and turning into two-way bloodbath of a divorce.Having done Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile together most audiences saw Douglas, Turner and DeVito on the poster and possibly subconsciously related it back to that level of comedy. I know I did after viewing the trailer before release. Even though the revenge aspect of the divorce was pretty clear from the trailer it still made things look light and flimsy even though it dealt with a serious issue - perfect Christmas fodder in fact. A comedy about the pratfalls of divorce over Christmas. It could only have one of those happy holiday endings Hollywood is so well known for. Oh how wrong, how very wrong, we we're to assume that! I remember a lot people hating this film. Most people saw it as an all out assault on the institution of marriage with many complaining it was just "too dark for enjoyment". Friends of the family that were going through a tough divorce themselves each walked out respectively, although not together of course, saying the film was too much to handle given the current point they were at in their lives. In fact I remember leaving the theater thinking I'd slipped into some parallel universe and by the looks of the faces on most of the audience, they seemed to have felt that too.The War of the Roses is a tale about a love being ship-wrecked and destroyed on the shores of bitter contempt. Sure it starts out like any love story would - two young strangers meeting in a destined place discovering a passion for one another that is raw and physical - a love at first sight if you will. It doesn't take very long for those pillars to fall leaving a void that is slowly filled with kids, a bigger house and the more trinkets to fill into that bigger house than you could fit into an antique roadshow sale. No longer able to window dress the void, which has now developed into a chasm, Barbara Rose announces that she wants a divorce. Oliver Rose doesn't take her seriously, which only hardens her contempt for him. She says she wants the house - having picked it out herself and slowly filled it with the things that have made it a home. He argues that he paid for the house and everything in it. It's not long before Barbara and Oliver start sinking to new levels of depravity against one another in pursuit of the valuables that defined them during their marriage as the battle lines are drawn.The War of the Roses constantly borders on veering off the edge of comedy and into full out horror. I love black comedies but quite frankly they don't come more darker, nastier and meaner than The War of the Roses. It's a testament to DeVito's brilliant direction here that he is able to pull back at just the right moments so that the film retains its comedic edge - albeit a very bizarre comedic edge that is peppered with spousal brutality unlike anything we have ever seen. Both Douglas and DeVito are in fine form but it's Turner's brilliant turn as Barbara Rose that steals the show. She goes from a loving and caring wife and mother to a cold, aloof almost assassin like vixen by the films end. She is absolutely outstanding in the role.If I do have a slight complaint about the film, it's that it tends to want to puts its leads into " good guy" , "bad guy" camps and somehow DeVito misogynistacly places his female character, Barbara Rose, firmly in the "bad guy" camp. I think this was an ill judgment on his part as he potentially alienates all his female viewers. And as we know in the messy arena of divorce, particularly the nasty ones, there really are no good or bad guys.I caught this on the TV the other night and it reminded me why it's such a much loved classic in my film library. Its lost none of its brutal comedic edge and its willingness to punch, batter and bruise its protagonists till the very bitter end is still alarming and discomforting in the way only a black comedy can alarm and discomfort whilst still trying to make you smile.

PWNYCNY This movie is about a married couple, Oliver and Barbara Rose, who discover that their marriage has been based on lies: for Barbara, that she never loved her husband, and for Oliver, that his wife loves him. For twenty years or so the situation in the Rose household is in a state of equilibrium. As a result, both protagonists can live their lives in a state of blissful denial - Barbara the dutiful wife and mother and Oliver the patriarchal bread winner and head of household. Things seem to going well for them and their marriage. Then one day things suddenly and abruptly change. During a dinner for Oliver's business partners at the Rose's home, a dinner, of course, prepared by Barbara, Oliver inadvertently humiliates Barbara which sets off a chain reaction of events that lead to tragic consequences, tragic because both of them are essentially good persons who don't deserve what's going to happen to them. Now feeling resentment, Barbara now gets in touch with her deeper feeling of inadequacy as a human being, the cause of which she attributes not to herself but to her overbearing husband, and as result she now hates him - and tells him that, straight to his face in the most unambiguous terms, including punching him hard on the face. Although slugged by his wife, Oliver still doesn't fully know what's hitting him. He does know that Barbara is upset but can't make heads or tails of it or take her seriously because, after all, she's his wife and, of course, she loves him. Soon it is impossible for the two of them to continue living together without denigrating each other. In an effort to eject Oliver from her life she starts her own business, which Oliver takes as a personal affront and a direct challenge to his role as the breadwinner, while Oliver, now angry and still perplexed, retaliates by belittling and humiliating Barbara in front of her customers. Tensions escalate after Barbara tells Oliver that she wants a divorce and is willing to waive alimony but wants to keep the house,and demands that he leave, based on the claim that the house was her's because she was the one who had done all the work to fix it up. Going against his lawyer's advice, the same lawyer (played by Danny DeVito in one of the great performances of his career) who had first advised Oliver that he had a legal right to stay in the house, advice which the lawyer later deeply regrets having given as it inflamed the situation and hurt his client, Oliver refuses to move out of the house and soon both are plotting on ways to force the other to leave. The fighting immediately turns violent with Barbara trying to run over Oliver with her ATV and repeatedly throwing heavy objects at Oliver's head and Oliver staggering around the house threatening to hit her with a large crow bar. Barbara is driven by her utter hatred for Oliver and Oliver by the hope that if he prevails then Barbara will come back to him. Both are now totally miserable. The movie ends on a tragic note, as both die,enemies to the bitter end. Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas play the protagonists. Mr. Douglas' performance is outstanding but this is Kathleen Turner's movie. Her performance has to rank as one of the greatest in cinema history.This movie is also an indictment of the legal profession as both Barbara and Oliver retain lawyers who, if anything, incite their clients thereby making matters worse. The lawyers are directly complicit in the disastrous events that ensue as both Barbara and Oliver believe that they have the law on their side.