The Roses

Posted on August 25, 2025 at 5:57 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout, sexual content, and drug content
Profanity:	Constant very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs, drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic, cartoon-style peril, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 28, 2025

There’s a reason romantic fairy tales end with the wedding, assuring us that the couple lived happily ever after but not taking on the difficult task of showing us what that looks like. Very few movies attempt to show what happens after love is declared and the wedding cake has been served to the guests, when the couple has to figure out how to hold onto the stardust while sharing the grubbier and surprisingly controversial tasks of operating a household and, for many, raising children.

“The Roses,” like the 1989 Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner “War of the Roses,” is based on a book by Warren Adler. Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn calls that book “Terrifying, black-humored, black-hearted and bristling,” a description many people might apply to her own work. The book and the two movies are about a once-loving marriage that curdles into scabrous loathing.

This lightly adapted version, changing some details but retaining the vitriol, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Theo, an architect, and Olivia Colman as Ivy, a chef. The movie opens in a disastrous session with a counselor, as the couple tries to come up with what they love about each other but cannot resist the temptation to insult each other as viciously as possible instead. The counselor tells them there may not be a way to move forward and we get a glimpse of the underlying connection between them. They cannot help laughing at the brutality of the insults. You know the song lyric, “too hot not to cool down?” This is “too hot to ever get irretrievably icy.”

We go back in time to see their meeting in London, both of them unhappy because their ideas are not appreciated by their employers. Their immediate attracting is electric and speaking of too hot not to cool down, minutes after meeting they are having sex in the refrigerator closet.

A few years later, they are in California, parents of twins. Theo is excited about the unveiling of his dream project, a maritime museum and Ivy enjoys her barely-breaking-even crab restaurant near the water. They disagree about some parenting choices; Ivy loves to give them sugary treats and Theo is all about eating healthy and working out. But they are endearingly supportive of one another.

And then, their fortunes turn upside down. Theo’s building collapses, along with his future in the profession, the same night Ivy’s 30 covers a day restaurant instantly becomes impossible to get a reservation following one rave review. Ivy takes over as breadwinner, and Theo takes over as full-time dad, housekeeper, and physical trainer for the twins, who are as into it as he is. This is when Theo and Ivy begin to resent and then feel like they loathe each other. They separate

Colman and Cumberbatch are so endlessly watchable that it’s almost easy to overlook that this is essentially a one-joke movie, the same one over and over as Ivy and Noah get increasingly more frustrated and hurt and lash out in increasingly more lacerating ways. Comedy often comes from seeing someone burn bridges we do not dare to. The brilliant supporting cast is woefully underused, except for Allison Janney, transcending the limits of the script as Ivy’s divorce lawyer, and it just gets exhausting. The ending tries to have it both ways, likely to leave audiences saying, “Wait, what?” On the way there, depending on your tolerance for people saying terrible things to their spouses, you may find it funny.

Parents should know that this movie includes very crude and graphic language and sexual references, extreme insults and pranks, and drinking, drunkenness, and drug use. While presented in a heightened comic tone, the underlying hostility may disturb some audience members.

Family discussion: Did you find yourself taking sides over the course of the film? Whose side? Did you switch sides?

If you like this, try; “The War of the Roses” and the book by Warren Adler and, for a more dramatic and romantic look at marital discord over the years, “Two for the Road”

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

Posted on July 12, 2018 at 5:40 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some action and rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic, cartoon-style peril and violence, weapons, fire, attempted murder
Diversity Issues:	A metaphorical theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	July 13, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	October 8, 2018

“You have to be carefully taught,” according to the Rodgers and Hammerstein song in “South Pacific.” Lt. Cable and Nelly Forbush sing ruefully about the prejudices drummed into them as children: “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late/Before you are six or seven or eight/To hate all the people your relatives hate/You’ve got to be carefully taught.” That same sober theme is gently raised in the midst of the silliness and fun scares of this third in the animated “Hotel Transylvania” series about Drac, the doting-to-a-fault vampire dad voiced by Adam Sandler, his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), and her very mellow human husband, Johnny (Andy Samberg).

In just about every other respect, it’s pretty much the same movie as the first two, with slightly less clever monster jokes than the first one and a slightly more appealing storyline than the second one. Basically, Adam Sandler gets to do his two favorite things: speak in a “funny” accent voice and be lazy, preferably in an exotic location (IRS, check to see if he deducted a cruise as a business expense in developing this one).

Drac is still over-involved in his daughter’s life, worrying way too much when you consider that it is very difficult to harm a vampire. In case we were not clear on that, it is spelled out for us in the movie’s opening flashback, set in 1897, where vampire killer Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) is trying to destroy Drac. But he is no match for a vampire with nimbleness, courage, and imperviousness to any threat but garlic or a stake through the heart. The original story’s third weapon against vampires, a crucifix, is omitted in favor of cartoon secularism, as is the ickiness of subsisting on blood, the inconvenience of sleeping in sunlight, or the problem of marriage between someone with a human life span and someone who never ages. Any concerns about those issues are for Twihards.

These are cute and cuddly monsters, including the Invisible Man (David Spade), Frankenstein and his bride (Kevin James and Fran Drescher), Murray the Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), and Mr. and Mrs. Wolfman (Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon), with their dozens of wolf-babies. There’s nothing at all scary about them and they seem to spend all of their time hanging out with each other, first at the resort that gives the series its title and then at Mavis’ surprise vacation — a cruise ship with all the amenities. As Drac points out, that means it’s just his hotel except on a boat. There’s one other big difference, though. He’s not in charge, which is both worrying and a little bit relaxing as well. “You need a vacation from managing everyone else’s vacation,” Mavis tells him. And this will be a chance for them to have some quality time together as a family.

Drac insists that the cruise, headed for the Bermuda Triangle and the lost continent of Atlantis “is not the Love Boat.” But he is beginning to think he might be interesting in finding romance (the vampire term is “zing” for love at first sight), many years since the death of Mavis’ mother. He even tries to find someone he’d like to swipe right on on the monster version of Tinder, called Zinger. And then, he takes a look at the beautiful — and human — ship’s captain, Erika (Kathryn Hahn), and ZING.

There’s some “monsters gotta be monsters” stuff — “We’re here, we’re hairy, and it’s our right to be scary!” Though of course they’re not scary after all and as in the other films it is the humans and their unwillingness to look beyond the tentacles and fur to see that just like us, monsters love their families and don’t want to hurt anyone. There’s a lot of silly stuff, a cute dance number, some appealing if uninspired pop song selections (Bruno Mars, the Beach Boys, the ubiquitous Mr. Blue Sky), plus the one song no one can resist dancing to (I won’t spoil it, but the audience groans suggested no one was surprised). It turns out music does have charms to sooth the savage beast after all. And this movie has enough charm to soothe little savages on summer vacation for 90 minutes or so.

Parents should know that this movie has some schoolyard language, potty humor, peril and violence (including attempted murder of monsters and a character who is badly injured and ultimately almost entirely prosthetic).

Family discussion: Why did Van Helsing hate monsters? Which monster would you like to be and why?

If you like this, try: the first two films, Monster House, “Igor“

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Posted on June 2, 2016 at 5:37 pm

Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone are masters of the music video parody, and their SNL shorts “D*** in a Box,” “Jack Sparrow,” and “I’m on a Boat,” all featuring genuine music stars, followed the first true viral video, the classic “Lazy Sunday.” They are gifted at composing catchy hooks, writing silly lyrics, and nailing the music and look of genres from rap to pop to R&B. With appealing targets and a three-minute running time, they did very well. Now they’ve produced, written, and starred in a feature length parody of music documentaries with “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” So, instead of comparing them to the performers they take on with their video shorts, they are going up against films like “This is Spinal Tap” and “Walk Hard,” both of which managed the daunting challenge of being more over-the-top than the acts they were parodying. “Popstar” is pleasant enough, but does not quite meet that challenge, getting most of its energy and most of its laughs from an endless parade of celebrity cameos, mostly winking at the audience.

Samberg plays Conner, once part of a popular band called Style Boyz with his childhood friends Owen (Taccone) and Lawrence (Schaffer), and now a hugely successful solo performer known as Conner4Real. Owen is now reduced to serving as DJ. Taccone provides the film’s rare subtle charms, making Owen so endearing he deserves his own movie. On stage, he sits behind an impressive high-tech set-up, but as he explains in one of the film’s comic high points, everything is set up on his iPod, which also has room for the audio books he listens to on the road. He makes the best of his relegation to the sidelines, even when Conner decides that he should have to wear a huge, heavy electro helmet/mask that shoots a zillion-watt light beam out of the top, so powerful it could probably disrupt the navigation system of the space station.

Lawrence is furious with Conner for stealing the credit he felt he deserved for one of his biggest hits. He has retreated to a farm in Colorado, where he makes terrible wood carvings and broods about the unfairness of it all. That hit, by the way, in a shrewd jab at the recording industry and its fans, turns out to be a brief rap segment in a song by a superstar (a blink-and-you’ll-miss her Emma Stone). Connor tells us that most rap artists do catchphrases, but his innovation (actually Lawrence’s) was to do a lot of catchphrases.

Conner is, of course, dating a starlet (Imogen Poots) and decides to distract the press from the terrible reviews of his new album by proposing to her in a stunt that goes terribly wrong. When ticket sales for his tour lag, he brings on an opening act, an up-and-coming rapper (Chris Redd) who “All About Eve”-style begins as a fan and then starts to take over the show.

The trio gets able support from SNL veterans Tim Meadows, Maya Rudolph, and Joan Cusack, and there are some funny cutaways to a TMZ-style sleazy “news” organization, but at a brisk under-90 minute running time no one is on screen for very long. The musical numbers are hilarious and the film is never mean-spirited about its characters or the real-life celebrities it is parodying. And by the time you figure out a joke isn’t working, two more have gone by, the pace itself enough things bouncing along. It tries so hard to entertain you, it would be hard-hearted not to give in.

Parents should know that this film includes very explicit nudity, very strong and crude language, sexual references, some comic violence, drinking, and drugs.

Family discussion: What celebrities does this remind you of? Why did Conner decide he wanted someone to be honest with him?

If you like this, try: “This is Spinal Tap,” “Walk Hard,” “Gentle and Soft” (the brilliant Bill Hader/Fred Armison mockumentary about a 70’s soft rock duo) and the Lonely Island videos

Related Tags:

Comedy Musical Satire

Hotel Transylvania 2

Posted on September 24, 2015 at 5:35 pm

Vampire Mavis (Selena Gomez) and human Jonathan (Andy Samberg) fell in love in the first “Hotel Translyvania,” and in this sequel they get married and have a baby named Dennis. He has his father’s unruly red curls. But his grandfather Drac (Adam Sandler) wants to make sure he has inherited his mother’s vampire genes as well. “He’s a late fanger,” Drac tries to reassure everyone, especially himself.

“Hotel Transylvania 2” suffers from sequel-itis — not as fresh or imaginative as the original and it feels like it was made because they wanted to do a sequel and not because they had anything special to say. But it is still entertaining.

Even before the movie starts, the Columbia logo statue turns into a vampire bat and we know we’re off to a place where cute monsters rule. The wedding scene is a lot of fun as it re-introduces us to the characters, all played by wonderful comic voice actors including David Spade (Griffin, the invisible man, who keeps insisting that he has an invisible girlfriend), Kevin James as Frankenstein and Fran Drescher as his wife, Eunice, Keegan-Michael Key as Murray the mummy, Steve Buscemi as Wayne the very fecund wolfman, and Molly Shannon as his wife, Wanda. We skip ahead quickly to the arrival of Dennis, and then ahead again as he approaches his 5th birthday, and Drac is still waiting to see if he will become a vampire. (Maybe when he grows up, he could marry similarly mixed-race Renesmee from “Twilight”).

This is even more pressing because if he is human, Mavis wants to move to California, near Jonathan’s parents, so he can be around other humans. Even though Dennis loves monsters, she thinks he will be happier around his own kind of people. So, she and Jonathan fly to California to see whether it is right for them, leaving Dennis with his grandfather.

Big mistake.

Drac promises to keep Dennis at the castle/hotel but instead takes him on a journey to try to get his vampire side to come out. And of course he brings his pals along. They visit a monster summer camp and try to scare some humans, but find that their scare power is significantly diminished. Humans ask for selfies and one of them even compliments Drac on his chocolate cereal. Dennis may be a late-fanger but these cuddly monsters are no-fangers, and when you’re looking for silly fun with a hug at the end, that’s just fine.

Parents should know that this film’s themes include monsters and scariness but it is mostly for humor. There is some comic peril and violence with no one hurt, some potty humor, themes of family/culture difference, conflicts. and prejudice.

Family discussion: What are the biggest cultural or ethnic differences in your family? Which is your favorite monster and why?

If you like this, try: the first “Hotel Transylvania” and “Megamind”

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2

Posted on September 29, 2013 at 11:33 pm

Who would have guessed that the brightest and funniest and most heartwarming animated film of the year would not be from Pixar or Disney but Sony? And that to boot it would be a sequel, or, perhaps given the subject matter, a second helping? “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2” is a fresh and charming delight especially welcome after a series of animated disappointments.

There’s a quick recap of the first episode, very loosely based on the 1970’s children’s book classic. We are reminded that would-be inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), who lives in Chewandswallow, created a machine called the “Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator” (FLDSMDFR for short) that turned water into food. But things got out of hand and the town was deluged with food until he saved the day by turning it off. Flint’s scientific idol, Chester V (Will Forte), has invited Flint and his friends to California while they clean up Chewandswallow. Like Flint, Chester has a simian sidekick. Flint has the monosyllabic monkey Steve (Neil Patrick Harris). Chester has put a human brain inside the brain of an orangutan named Barbara (“Like a terducken!” she says brightly), voiced by Kristen Schaal. Barb has an exquisite manicure and hairdo and a firm insistence on not being called a monkey. She is an ape.

At first, Flint is hesitant to put on hold his plans to create a lab on the island for his friends, especially meteorologist Sam Sparks (Anna Faris). But Sam knows what it means to Flint to get a chance to work with Chester, so she encourages him to put the plans for the lab on hold. Sam, Flint’s fisherman dad Tim (James Caan), the Chewandswallow police chief (Terry Crews), and their goofy friend Brent (Andy Samberg), all move to California and Flint goes to work in a facility that looks like a tweaked version of the Googleplex with coffee always within reach and caffeine patches on request.

But then it turns out that the FLDSMDFR is somehow working more damage than ever, now producing weird combinations of food and animals — foodimals — with hilariously preposterous visual and verbal puns. There’s the shrimpanzee, the hippotatosaurus, the susheep, and the taco-dile, along with other delicious mash-ups. Chester sends Flint to shut it down, swearing him to secrecy, but Flint tells Sam and ends up taking the whole gang back to Chewandswallow with him. A few mild quibbles — it would be nie in a movie about scientists to have some actual science used in the problem-solving. And after a movie in which adorable marshmallows and strawberries and even cheeseburgers are cavort so endearingly, parents may find it even more difficult to persuade picky eaters and tenderhearted types to eat their dinners.

But there’s a very sweet storyline about the importance of friends — having friends and being a good friend, and a nice aspirational moral about making the world better — and the pure silly fun of a group of animators outdoing each other with escalating puns that range from the outlandish to the almost-but-not-quite unforgivable. Not once, but twice, there are jokes about a leek in the boat, and it is funny both times. Lines of dialogue lie “piece of cake,” “we’re toast,” and “this is bananas” are punctuated with visual counterpoint. And a bright “New” song by Paul McCartney gives the soundtrack as much sunshiney as the adorable creatures and cheery humor.

Parents should know that this movie has some mild potty humor and comic/cartoon-style peril, most shown to be not scary.

Family discussion: Why was it important for Flint to apologize? How was he affected by being bullied? What does Barb learn about Chester? Which one of Flint’s inventions would you like to try? Do you have an idea that could change the world?

If you like this, try: the first film, the book, and “Megamind”