TonyMontana96
Danny DeVito's dark divorce comedy blends the right amount of laughs with quiet, powerful sequences that show glances of these two people still in love with one another. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner are very good as the crazy and uncivilized Oliver Rose and Barbara Rose, but it's Danny DeVito who gives the best performance in the picture, playing Oliver's best friend 'Gavin', a likable, helpful and reliable man that favours neither side, DeVito's character tells the story too, keeping it detailed, interesting and even with its many themes that include romance, comedy and drama. The War of the Roses is not the happiest film to watch for those of you that are enjoying marriage, but nonetheless it's a very good picture with some fairly strong insight.
owen9825
This was labelled as a comedy, but had no more jokes than any other film. I don't appreciate IMDb wasting my time by saying this is a comedy, I hope I save someone the time of watching this film if comedy is what they're looking for.The film was just about the rise and fall of the Roses' marriage and is as dull as it sounds. The divorce quickly becomes nasty. This movie might be handy for marriage counselling (well before any problems arise), but isn't useful as entertainment. The description misrepresents the film by only focusing on the divorce, since a large chunk of the movie occurs while they're happily together.Danny DeVito frequently appears, but rarely with any significance. His client in the office really doesn't say enough, it feels very artificial.The casting was good, as the pets and children at various ages blend gracefully.The directing was good.
tieman64
"My fee is $450 an hour, and when a man who makes $450 wants to tell you something for free, you should listen." So says Gavin D'Amato, played by Danny DeVito, a high priced lawyer who kicks off "War of the Roses" by offering a cautionary tale to a man considering divorce. This cautionary tale, of course, is the film we're about to watch. As he is also the director of "War of the Roses", DeVito functions as both the narrator inside and outside of the film.D'Amato's tale is about acquisitions, possessions and the power of money, so the lawyer's early mentioning of cash is significant. In offering his advice for free, however, D'Amato sets himself up as being morally apart from the world he is about to describe. He is a voice of reason, or so he would like us to think.D'Amato's tale? Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas play The Roses, a wealthy couple who first meet at an auction (this meeting place is fitting; the duo battle over objects from the onset). With marriage then comes riches, happiness, big houses, and many garish possessions, the film painting a now familiar Utopian image of late 1980s Reganism. When the passion of romance fades, however, the couple instigate a bitter, violent divorce. From here on, the film becomes a dark comedy, a demented version of "Citizen Kane", each self-obsessed partner blaming the other for their psychoses, and each becoming maddeningly preoccupied with acquisitions, possessions, inventories, objects and artifacts, to the complete exclusion of everything else. As the marriage crumbles, the couple become so obsessed with surfaces (the film takes place at "Christmas", man's festive ode to consumerism) that they conduct a literal, and quite violent, war in their own opulent mansion. Set in Washington DC (military-looking helicopters constantly fly over apocalyptic, DC skylines), the militaristic tone of the movie has obvious, larger ramifications. The capital of the United States is capital. Nothing else matters. Cue much violence and possessiveness, culminating, fittingly, in DeVito directing a biopic of trade unionist Jimmy Hoffa three years later.It's a very good film, handsomely directed by DeVito, whose love for Hitchcock is apparent throughout. Douglas and Turner also do well, chewing scenery left, right and centre. Both have always been drawn to dark roles. Here they satirise their romantic unions in the "Romancing the Stone" movies, in which their both starred, and also a number of their previous films, in which Douglas is typically a yuppie careerist, a greedy scoundrel, a man who's consumed by dangerous women and exhibits drives toward power and success through money, while Turner is typically a femme-fatalle or marginalised woman driven to further exclusion. In "War of the Roses" the duo both play toward these now familiar roles, whilst also laying bare the crassness behind them. The shock of the movie is not that the Rose's rosy marriage fails, or even that the couple are willing to kill to keep their possessions, but ultimately that their marriage was always itself all about acquisition.The film then ends with a dying Douglas putting his hand on a dying Turner. We perceive this as an act of affection, but she clearly views it as an act of possession. Her dying act is to push him away, her body passing unclaimed.7.9/10 – Good but too long. For a more intellectual take on this material, see Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours". Worth two viewings.
Red-Barracuda
A middle-aged affluent couple hit marital problems and start fighting over the ownership of their mansion. This leads to increasing levels of antagonism and borderline sociopathic behaviour.The War of the Roses is very 80's, very loud and kind of fun. If you want a subtle study of marital breakdown then seek it somewhere else because this most certainly is not it. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner play the warring couple. We follow their story from their first meeting, through the happy early days to the outright marital war that constitutes the end of their relationship. Douglas and Turner are basically let loose on this film to chew the scenery and go cartoonishly over-the-top. And for the most part it's a great deal of fun seeing them do this, as both are very capable actors who can play mildly deranged very convincingly. I felt, however, that the film lost a bit of steam in its final section. As the pair went increasingly berserk in their antics, the film lost me a bit. Having said that, it is a funny film at times and it's quite a bit of fun watching both principal actors going hell for leather. It's probably a film that people going through a divorce can relate to best. It most probably will give them a few ideas.
