Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour The Roses And What's Making Us Happy About this episode First a novel and a 1989 hit film, the story of The Roses has been told before. This time around, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman play a couple whose love curdles into resentment and then hatred. The film features Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, and is directed by Jay Roach (Meet the Parents, Austin Powers) and written by Tony McNamara (Poor Things, The Favourite).
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0:19 Stephen Thompson? The new movie, The Roses, lets Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch go big in a darkly satirical story of a married couple whose love curdles into deep and abiding hatred. It's a fresh retelling of the novel The War of the Roses, which spawned a hit movie in the late 1980s. I'm Stephen Thompson. Today, we are talking about The Roses on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is my co-host, Linda Holmes. Hey, Lynda. Hey, buddy. Also with us is Wayland Wong. She's the co-host of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator, from Planet Money. Hey, Wayland. Hello. Good to have you here. Also with us is NPR Culture Desk correspondent, Chloe Veltman. Hey, Chloe.
1:00 Speaker 02 Hi there, Stephen.
1:01 Stephen Thompson? It is great to have you all here. So, The Roses is based on Warren Adler's 1981 novel, The War of the Roses, which tells the story of a couple who meet, fall in and out of love, and blow up in mutually self-destructive fashion. The novel spawned a hit film with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, and now the story has been rebooted with a fresh cast. Aside from the central premise, The Roses changes the story pretty radically. In this case, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Theo Rose, an architect who endures a professional humiliation that derails his career, while Olivia Colman plays his wife Ivy, whose dreams of running her own restaurant take off in a big way.
1:41 Stephen Thompson? So Theo refocuses his life on parenting their two children, while Ivy finances Theo's work on their dream house. But as their love curdles into resentment and then hatred, well, things get dark.
1:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's Japanese vodka infused with tarragon, so it adds a bit of bitterness.
1:58 Speaker 04 Ivy likes to leave a little bit of herself in everything she does.
2:01 Stephen Thompson? The film surrounds Coleman and Cumberbatch with a cast of concerned friends and colleagues, played by the likes of Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon. It's directed by Jay Roach and written by Tony McNamara, whose work on films like The Favorite and Poor Things make him a natural to tackle bleak comedy. The Roses is in theaters now. Waylon, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of The Roses?
2:23 Speaker 05 I really liked it. I will say I laughed within the first minute of this film, which I thought was a good sign. And then that kind of carried me through the rest of it. I really liked when Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman were on the screen. I really liked those two leads, those two performances. I liked the writing for them. And so I found myself actually just wanting a two-hander between the two of them because I felt like whenever the friends were on screen, it was total dead weight. So it's like, to me, the movie was like, well, American audiences will be confused by British people talking fast. So here are some Americans talking like Americans and doing very broad things. And I didn't like any of that. So for me, I liked, you know, whatever, 80% of it.
3:08 Stephen Thompson? OK, interesting. You don't like Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, my god.
3:12 Speaker 05 I mean, I do like them as performers, but I feel like what they were given to do, I just felt condescended to. It was like, here are some SNL alums, you know, because you're not going to enjoy a comedy of manners without, you know. I was like, come on, guys, I'm OK. I don't need them.
3:27 Stephen Thompson? OK, how about you, Chloe?
3:28 Speaker 02 You know, the only issue I had honestly with the entire movie was that it's supposed to be the Mendocino Coast, which isn't far from where I live here in San Francisco. But it clearly isn't the Mendocino Coast. It's shot in Devon, England, and nobody's going to fool me about that. But other than that, I thought it was so lovely. Honestly, having read the novel and seen the 1980s movie, which are both so cynical, I really adored how loving this movie actually is. And even in their battle for supremacy, at the bottom of this relationship, I think, is a lot of love. So I found it to be delightful. And also, just
4:10 Speaker 02 Just like Waylon, from the very, very first moments of this movie, I was chuckling, you know, and I didn't stop laughing the entire film. I thought it was great. And I actually really enjoyed the supporting cast. I thought they were a nice foil, especially in that fabulous dinner party scene. They're all sitting around and there's a lot of banter going on. And the Brits are doing it one way and the Americans are doing it another way. And I just thought that was quite delightful, a bit of a cliche perhaps, but fun nonetheless.
4:43 Stephen Thompson? I gotta say, there's glass half full. And then there's viewing not just the film, but the relationship at the center of it as quote lovely and delightful. This is an acrid, very dark comedy.
4:56 Speaker 02 I disagree entirely with that. Not at all. I mean, I do feel the 1980s version was dark and acrid, but not this version. Look, no household pet gets harmed in this version.
5:11 Stephen Thompson? That's true.
5:12 Speaker 02 I'll take that.
5:13 Stephen Thompson? I do appreciate that very, very much.
5:16 Speaker 05 And they also ship off the children. So it's like, no children are really harmed.
5:19 Speaker 02 That's positives.
5:20 Stephen Thompson? Okay. How about you, Holmesy?
5:22 Linda Holmes? I agree completely with Chloe that it is a very sweet and much softer version of this story, much more about sort of people who basically love each other, who are fighting, but really in the end, they have hurts and so forth, but they really do love each other, which is why I was completely bored by it and thought it was totally toothless.
5:44 Stephen Thompson? Wow, interesting.
5:45 Linda Holmes? This just ended up being like one million other things that I have seen about middle aged couples trying to kind of overcome the boring middle part of their marriage. Like, you know, stuff like The Four Seasons was recently on Netflix. To me, it's just a lot of like, okay, it's rich, middle aged, rich people fighting. Listen, you don't have to be true to the plot beats of an original work like the novel or a well-known adaptation like the 1989 movie. But I do think it is possible to get so far. From the original material that I no longer understand why you're doing it.
6:26 Speaker 02 I think that's an asset.
6:28 Linda Holmes? The novel to me and the 89 movie, and I didn't read the novel in detail, but I did go back and kind of look through it. You know, the novel and that film are both about the divorce, really. They're about the idea that nobody will ever hate you as much as somebody who once really loved you. And I think that is a really fun, it is really dark, but a kind of an entertaining and very pointed idea. What I saw in the promotional stuff from the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things, I was like, what? And I think it is exactly as muddled as that suggests. And so to me, it doesn't know what it is. It tries to throw
7:13 Linda Holmes? in a little bit of genuine, you know, darkness here and there, but I don't think it's ever really committed to that. I think Chloe's exactly right that fundamentally, this is about like people who really love each other. And you gotta put the kids out of the house in a way that made no sense to me that he suddenly decided to make them athletes.
7:32 Stephen Thompson? No, that did make no sense.
7:34 Linda Holmes? Yeah, I just did not like it, even though I think Chloe, who really loved it, is exactly right about it. That's what I would say.
7:40 Stephen Thompson? Interesting.
7:41 Speaker 05 I have a slightly alternate take on what I think is the fundamental dynamic that drives this couple. I do think there's real affection there, but I think they are fundamentally huge snobs and a little bit misanthropic. At one point, one says to the other, I hate everyone but us. And it's like, they just think they are better than everyone, right? And so I think that that opening scene with the couples counselor really crystallized that for me because they start out, you know, they're not taking the assignment they get from the couples counselor seriously. So they're just taking potshots at each other and it gets meaner and meaner.
8:14 Speaker 04 Two, the shape of her head is somewhat pleasing at a distance. Three, I have memories of her being witty. For she smells pleasant on occasion. Actually, struggle to write anymore.
8:27 Speaker 05 But then they actually are united in turning against the couples counselor because you realize they actually don't respect the therapist. Yes. And so it's more fun for them to unite against a therapist and take down the therapist and have a good laugh about it than actually work on their problems. And so I find that to be interesting. It's kind of like what I was thinking about during this was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The play.
8:48 Speaker 02 Very George and Martha dynamic going on.
8:50 Speaker 05 Yes, and then Tom and Sheer from Succession, who I think are like the gold standard of like a toxic couple that there's a lot of affection there, but they're actually extremely mean to each other and mean to everyone else around them. So I kind of liked what this movie did for that kind of dynamic.
9:06 Stephen Thompson? I actually think the fact that we see a lot of them liking each other and a lot of them getting along makes this story a little darker and a little sadder because it's not necessarily a sense of just like two toxic miserable people, you know, who only understand how to destroy each other. You get a sense of what brought them together. And I think you're totally right that they are definitely both contrarians. They're both kind of like oppositionalists and that's what kind of brings them together. But the other thing that I think makes that aspect of this telling of this story work is these two actors have, I think, a ton of chemistry. They have chemistry in opposition to each other, but they also have chemistry that
9:51 Stephen Thompson? makes you understand why they would get together. And so it's not just a story of two people who hate each other, but of a love that is constantly curdling. And it's curdling because of bad decisions they make. It's curdling, you know, because of immaturity and jealousy and resentment. And to me, it just makes the story feel more plausible in a way that actually makes it kind of darker and sadder. If you're watching this story through the prism of like your own relationships, you just see like, oh, my God, could my love do that? You know, I think for me, the limits of my enjoyment of this story are the only things that are kind of holding me back from like. Embracing this film totally without reservation.
10:35 Stephen Thompson? My reaction to the original 1989 film, which I saw in theaters and haven't seen since, is definitely through the prism of like, in 1989, I had a very different perspective on love and relationships than I have in 2025. And I think this is such a fundamentally dark story that I've never been able to like, fully, fully, fully embrace it. And unlike Wayland, I actually really liked a lot of this supporting cast and what they're bringing to this story.
11:02 Speaker 05 Maybe I'm a snob. Maybe that's why I didn't like all these Americans.
11:05 Linda Holmes? I agree with you, Wayland. I like these actors, but not in this.
11:09 Stephen Thompson? Oh, okay.
11:10 Linda Holmes? I mean, the supporting cast. I really like Andy Samberg. This is the only time I have ever run out of patience with Kate McKinnon being weird and horny.
11:19 Stephen Thompson? Interesting, because she's so weird in this. And I know you love her in weird mode.
11:23 Linda Holmes? She's so weird and horny in this, but it is so one note. And she is so funny and great that I feel like they hit this one note and it's the only idea they have for this character. The only one who worked for me was Allison Janney. And they have Allison Janney in the poster. So please understand she's in a scene, right?
11:42 Speaker 05 It's true. I was expecting to see more of her, Big Left Down.
11:45 Stephen Thompson? But what a scene!
11:47 Speaker 05 It's true.
11:47 Linda Holmes? I think she's wonderful in it. I think she works in this. I don't think this is the right slot to slot Andy Samberg into, somebody who I like a lot. And I think what they do with the Zoe Chau character is really regrettable and strange. It had no charm to me. I think all the friends being jerks, like, they only associate with other horrible people. And I think if it's supposed to be that they are misanthropes, I would rather see some contrast between them being misanthropic, but them at least having people in their lives who are not awful.
12:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, because I felt also that Theo and Ivy would not want to hang out with this particular group of people. I was like, there's lots of smart people for them to hang out with. They're in fields where they're running into probably other smart, interesting people. I was like, it's not going to be. This crowd, you know, and it just got a little bit too much for me and I I wanted to play it out differently.
12:48 Speaker 02 Oh, you're all so earnest. I mean, look, this is not at all supposed to be a realistic scenario. It is full of moments of magical thinking. This storm that it changes everything near the start of the movie, these external things, they're not part of any kind of real scenario, really. So for me, it's a broad comedy. It's not supposed to be based on relationships that we understand to be real. I did not find the supporting cast members to be jerks, honestly. I agree that it's a strange group of people to hang out with, but you know, these are two British people. They're rude to each other and they laugh it off. This is repartee and the other characters have trouble understanding that.
13:30 Speaker 02 I don't know. I I sort of feel like maybe we're not supposed to think of the relationships in this movie like we do in other films, you know?
13:37 Linda Holmes? I hear you, but I think the movie has trouble deciding how heightened it's supposed to be. Because I think there's a lot to be said for the point of view that Stephen is taking, that this is a more kind of real view of how a bad relationship might look as opposed to, as you mentioned earlier, harm to pets and things like that. This is more like, you know, there's a lot of crying and then making up and then crying and then making up and they go through that cycle several times. And it is more, I think, grounded than the novel and the other adaptation. But it's like it's either too grounded or it's not grounded. It's in a weird middle space.
14:19 Linda Holmes? And that's what I mean when I say muddled by the fact that it's Poor Things and Meet the Parents, right? When you do that, you wind up in this middle area where it's not really weird, like Poor Things, and it's not quite just a silly comedy like Meet the Parents is. It kind of is trying to have it both ways in a sense that for me was just not successful. And I think there's kind of a last minute hail Mary effort to kind of. Bring that biting satire, like I am stretched to call this satirical, really. Interesting. I think it's silly, I guess, but like it also wasn't funny enough for me to sort of on that basis, enjoy it.
15:02 Speaker 05 I think that kind of bifurcation you're talking about, Linda, is also kind of what I was thinking about when I was explaining that I liked the stuff between the two leads. I didn't like the other stuff because the stuff between the two leads, to me, it felt grounded, it felt earnest, it felt realistic, right? They talk like actual grown, smart adults who are working through some like mature problems. Like, I feel like the problems that they have that lead to all of the animosity, like whose career gets primacy, who's supporting whom, like who's going to do the household labor and like what's the trade off there? That's all very realistic stuff to me that lots of modern couples deal with. And you do see them like working through it. You know what I mean? The two leads have a lot of self-awareness, which I like.
15:45 Speaker 05 And, you know, they're not pure spite, they're not pure narcissism. And when you do get the apologies, which I think maybe a few apologies too much for Linda, but when you get the apologies, they are making kind of real apologies, right? They have enough emotional self-awareness to be like, I did this and it was wrong. But I think, I like that the movie shows the limits of masking your real emotional problems with humor, right? Because then they don't actually take accountability and fix anything. And so it's actually quite realistic in the way I think it portrays those kinds of like adult relationship problems. I did feel that dichotomy there.
16:20 Speaker 02 Can we talk about the house? Because the house is so important in the novel and in the 1980s movie. And there's a beautiful house in this version too, but it serves a different function, I think.
16:30 Stephen Thompson? The house is definitely a character in this movie.
16:33 Linda Holmes? The purpose of the house is much less clear to me in this version of the story. There's very much a sense in the way this story was told before that he made a lot of money and she was sort of responsible for making this house into a home. And although they kind of tried to do that gender flipped in this situation, there is so much in it about them. Building it sort of together or her encouraging him to build it and
17:03 Stephen Thompson? She finances it, he designs it.
17:05 Linda Holmes? He puts this love into the house because he's an architect, right? You know, when you saw Kathleen Turner do this, she's creating the home in a more domestic kind of way, whereas he's really building the house professionally. And so the emotion behind it is just a little different because the whole movie is so much softer to me that it makes sense that rather than being something that is a fundamental part of her identity versus the money. You know, when they're in the meeting with the lawyer and all of a sudden she decides, they decide they're going to fight over the house. It sort of makes sense that he wants the house because he designed the house.
17:44 Linda Holmes? Why she wants the house kind of becomes just to spite him, but because the lawyer is saying, don't talk, you don't really get like, what is her thinking other than spiting him, which I don't think they've built the foundations for because of the things we've talked about where these people don't actually seem to loathe each other. And if she doesn't loathe him, I don't know why she's insisting on keeping the house to spite him, other than that you need that for the book. I'll just put it this way, in the book, she says she wants a divorce at the end of chapter seven of 32.
18:25 Linda Holmes? I think if this movie were a book, they would decide to get a divorce in about chapter 27 of 32.
18:31 Speaker 05 I agree with that. Yeah, yeah.
18:32 Linda Holmes? It was a book and it was a movie originally about the divorce. This is about the marriage and I just didn't think it was as interesting to me.
18:42 Stephen Thompson? All right, well, we have a broad range of opinions about the roses. We think listeners might as well. We want to know what you think. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com slash NPR pop culture. We will have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week? Stay tuned for the following
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20:42 Stephen Thompson? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Wayland Wong, what's making you happy this week, buddy?
20:50 Speaker 05 What's making me happy is a very exciting album announcement from a pop star. I'm, of course, referring to our Lord and Savior, Carly Rae Jepsen. It is the 10th anniversary of Emotion. So she's releasing a 10th anniversary special edition on October 17th. A bunch of new songs. There's one you can already stream called "More."
21:30 Speaker 05 I am like so, so excited for Emotion 10th Anniversary, Carly Rae Jepsen.
21:34 Linda Holmes? I love this for you, Wayland.
21:37 Stephen Thompson? Wayland, you are joined in this enthusiasm. There are at least two full-blown Jepsiniacs on the Pop Culture Happy Hour hosting team. Aisha Harris and I have bonded over this in the past and I'm happy to cosign this excitement about the pop star releasing a big album this fall. Nice. Thank you, Wayland Warren. Chloe Veltman, what's making you happy this week?
21:58 Speaker 02 Oh, another pop star thing. You know, I guess what's been making me violently happy this week is that YouTube has been throwing up early footage of Bjork performing on various TV shows back in the day, like her appearance singing "Human Behavior" from her, I think it was her debut album in 1993 on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
22:29 Speaker 02 It's just so fun watching her skipping around the stage. The other thing is, you know, it was just delightful as well because I was just in Iceland. So I think that's why the algorithms were serving this up to me. That must have been the reason.
22:41 Speaker 05 They know.
22:41 Speaker 02 But it also just made me happy thinking about my trip. Delightful.
22:45 Stephen Thompson? All right. Thank you, Chloe Veltman. Linda Holmes, what's making you happy this week?
22:48 Linda Holmes? Is This Seat Taken is a game that you can play on mobile devices, on computers, and on the Switch, which is where I have been playing it. Is This Seat Taken is a game where you are responsible for assigning a bunch of little beings and they're basically just little shapes with legs. And they each have different preferences about where they want to sit. I want to sit on the aisle. I want to sit next to someone who will talk to me. I want to sit next to Frank. I don't want to sit next to Betty. So it's like one of those logic puzzles that you used to be able to do where it's like, you know, the people in this class are taller than the people in that class and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, sometimes it's a bus, sometimes it's a movie theater, sometimes it's, you know, someplace else that you have to figure out where everybody's going to sit.
23:31 Linda Holmes? It is so calming. It is so chill and it is so kind of pressure free. And it's also immensely satisfying because if you don't have it right, all that happens is it doesn't light up and tell you that you have it right. Then you look around, you say, oh my gosh, which of these little things is mad now? And you find the one that has a little frowny face and you can look at it and it'll be like, no, no, no, remember, I don't like to sit next to anybody who's wearing too much cologne. And this person over here is wearing too much cologne and it says so. So now you gotta move them around again. Eventually you get to things where you gotta also pack their luggage in the back. Everything about this is so what my brain wants right now.
24:15 Linda Holmes? So again, is this seat taken? Play it. Check it out. Lose yourself in figuring out who wants to sit next to who.
24:22 Stephen Thompson? I love it. Thank you, Linda Holmes. So I have been obsessed with music since I was about 11.
24:29 Linda Holmes? No.
24:30 Stephen Thompson? I've loved many, many musicians along the way, but my first true hyper fixated obsession was with a musician named Jeff Buckley. My daughter is named Grace because that is the title of his album from 1994, which remains one of my all time favorites. Jeff Buckley died from an accidental drowning in 1997, having put out just that one album in his lifetime. And he's since become sort of a mythical figure, totally justifiably in my eyes. But there's this huge challenge in keeping his memory alive properly because he just didn't leave behind that much music. Now there is a lovely documentary about his life and music.
25:12 Stephen Thompson? It's directed by Amy Berg and it's called It's Never Over Jeff Buckley. And there are certainly a few kind of music documentary cliches in there along the way. I think this film really gives short shrift to the making of the second album, but it stays personal in a really smart way by focusing most intently on the three women who were closest to him in his life, his mother, Mary Gubert, and two girlfriends with whom he stayed close, Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, who are great storytellers. You get a much clearer sense, I think, of who he was this way as opposed to if you had a bunch of critics coming on, kind of typical, like VH1 talking heads, talking about his importance. In this way, it's a really raw story, and you can feel just
25:57 Stephen Thompson? how raw it still is for those closest to him. And it's still hard to watch it play out because it's a story of how much brilliant music just never got to exist. And obviously, it's hard to talk about the tragedies of his life as something that's making me happy. But the arrival of this documentary is leading new audiences to discover Jeff Buckley's music, as evidenced by the fact that Grace has been dipping onto the Billboard Albums Chart for the first time in almost exactly 30 years. So that is "It's Never Over Jeff Buckley." It's in theaters now, and that is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org/popculturenewsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Waylon
26:42 Stephen Thompson? Wong, Chloé Veltman, Linda Holmes, thanks so much for being here.
26:45 Speaker 02 It was fun. Thanks so much.
26:46 Speaker 05 Thank you. It's fun.
26:47 Linda Holmes? Thank you, Stephen.
26:48 Stephen Thompson? This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Janaye Morris, Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next week.
27:07 Speaker 07 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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