Danny DeVito wasn’t just an unlikely movie star in the 1980s. He was a director of note, the kind who seemed destined for a long and satisfying career behind the camera.
His debut feature, “Throw Momma From the Train,” showed his peculiar bent for bleak comedy.
But that was merely the appetizer for the main course, a spicy dish dubbed “The War of the Roses.”
The 1989 feature took a beloved screen couple – “Romancing the Stone’s” Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas – and commanded them to squeeze the life out of each other.
Sometimes literally.
The film split critics and audiences alike during its theatrical release. Watch it today and take in a black comedy classic.
It’s also a sad reminder that DeVito’s directing career never fulfilled that early promise.
Oliver and Barbara Rose are the picture perfect couple. They met cute, had two adorable children and live in the kind of home that would leave poets tongue tied.
That’s the couple the public saw.
Barbara is actually sick and tired of being a Stepford Wife, an accessory to her husband’s gold-plated image.
So when she asks Oliver for a divorce, it’s the spark that sets off a war unlike any other seen on screen.
Had “Roses” been made today, the film would have focused on the physical battles for supremacy. Consider “Bride Wars” as a nauseating example of the formula gone awry.
Instead, “Roses” spends the bulk of its time establishing the relationship between the leads, a complicated dance that touches on societal expectations, marital compromises and, in some cases, hedonistic pursuits.
DeVito, who also plays Oliver’s lawyer, uses sly camera angles and brilliant dissolves to bring a visual snap to the proceedings. And he coaxes wonderfully modulated performances from his cast.
Douglas’ comic chops were a mostly untapped asset in the ’80s. Here, he strikes the right balance between privilege and persecution, restraining himself to let the escalating war generate the most uneasy laughs.
Turner lands the harder assignment, left to stew as a trophy wife left to her own devices. She’s sexy, vulnerable and, as the film veers to its logically dark conclusion, so very, very angry.
“The War of the Roses” is one of the worst love stories ever commited to film, and a perennial antidote to the rom-com blues.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
During some three-hour bender at work, when I was waiting for my shift to end, I came across some ESPN- Bill Simmons screed, brimming at the top with the usual pop culture schlock, including a shot at DeVito’s “over-directing” in “The War of the Roses” (don’t ask how that fit in to a column on sports). Not that I believe Simmons would know what “over-directing” was if someone brought in a crew to film his next cough-test at the doctor, but it damn-near came across as the most ironic thing I’ve ever read from on a sports site.
Roses and Momma crossed the line for me to being disturbing and not funny. Mostly dark and no comedy. The only remote comparrison I can make is Steve Carrell’s character on the American tv version of the office. At some point it becomes painful to watch what his character is put through.
I found War of the Roses too painful to watch more than once. There was nothing remotely likeable about either character, and there was nothing communicated in the movie that explained where all the hate came from. It wasn’t funny either.