Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Roses And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

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).Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The new movie The Roses lets Olivia Coleman 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, Linda. Hey, buddy. Also with us is Waylon Wong. She's the co-host of NPR's Daily Economics Podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money. Hey, Waylon.

Hello. Good to have you here. Also with us is NPR Culture Desk correspondent, Chloe Veltman. Hey, Chloe. Hi there, Stephen. 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 Coleman plays his wife Ivy, whose dreams of running her own restaurant take off in a big way. 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. Yeah, it's Japanese vodka infused with Tarragon, so that's a bit of bitterness. Ivy likes to leave a little bit of herself and everything she does. The film surrounds Coleman and Cumberbatch with a cast of concerned friends and colleagues, played by the likes of Andy Sandberg 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? 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 Coleman were on the screen. I really liked those two leads, those two performances. I like 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. Okay, interesting. You don't like Andy Sandberg and Kate McKinnon, my God.

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 S&L 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 okay. I don't need them. Okay, how about you, Chloe? 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 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. I got to 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.

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. I'll take that. I do appreciate that very, very much. And they also ship off the children, so it's like no children are really harmed here. That's positives. Okay. How about you, homsey? 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 two-thousy. Wow. Interesting. 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. I think that's an asset. 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 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 got to put the kids out of the house in a way that made no sense to me that he suddenly decided to make them athletes. No, that did make no sense.

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. Interesting. 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 counsellor seriously, so they're just taking pot shots at each other, and it gets meaner and meaner. Two, the shape of her head is somewhat pleasing at a distance. Three, I have memories of her being witty.

Four, she smells pleasant on occasion. Actually, struggle to write any more. But then they actually are united in turning against the couples counselor, because you realize they actually don't respect the therapist. 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, then 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? Very George and Martha dynamic going on. Yes. And then Tom and Cher 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. I actually think the first. 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 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. 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. 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 Waylon, I actually really liked a lot of this supporting cast and what they're bringing to this story. Maybe I'm a snob. Maybe that's why I didn't like all these Americans. I agree with you, Whalen. I like these actors, but not in this. Oh, okay.

I mean the supporting cast. I really like Andy Sandberg. This is the only time I have ever run out of patience with Kate McKinnon being weird and horny. Interesting, because she's so weird in this. And I know you love her in weird mode. 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 Alice and Janney in the poster. So please understand she's in a scene. One scene.

It's true. I was expecting to see more for a big luckdown. But what a scene. It's true. 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 Chow 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. Yeah, because I felt also that few and Ivy would not want to hang out with this particular group of people. 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 wanted to play out differently.

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 subchanges everything near the start of the movie, these external things. They're not part of the, 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. I don't know. 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? 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. And that's what I mean when I say muddled by the fact that it's poor things and meet the parents. 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 satir. 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. 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 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 Chulleets have a lot of self-awareness, which I like. 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. 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. The house is definitely a character in this movie. 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 try 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. She finances it. He designs it.

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. 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. 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. I think if this movie were a book, they would decide to get a divorce in about chapter 27 of 32. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. 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. 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 letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture, we will have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Waylon Wong, what's making you happy this week, buddy? 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. Ray Jepson. 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 Moore. I'm like so, so excited for emotion, 10th anniversary, Carly Ray Jepson. I love this for you, Waylon. Waylon, you are joined in this enthusiasm. There are at least two full-blown Jepsyniacs on the pop culture happy hour hosting team. Harris and I have bonded over this in the past. And I'm happy to co-sign this excitement about the pop star releasing a big album this one. Nice. Thank you, Waylon Warren.

Chloe Veltman, what's making you happy this week? 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. 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. They know. But it also just made me happy thinking about my trip. Delightful. All right. Thank you, Chloe Veltman. Linda Holmes, what's making you happy this week?

Is this seat taken? It 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 the seat taken as 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 and 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.

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 and 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 got to move them around again. Eventually, you get to things where you got to also pack their luggage in the back. Everything about this is so what my brain wants right now. So again, is this seat taken? Play it. Check it out. Lose yourself in figuring out who wants to sit next to who. I love it. Thank you, Linda Holmes. So I have been obsessed with music since I was about 11. No. 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. 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 Giber, 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, in way, it's a really raw story, and you can feel just 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, you know, 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 slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Waylon Wong, Chloe Veltman, Linda Holmes. Thanks so much for being here. It's fun. Thanks so much. Thank you. It's fun. Thank you, Stephen. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Jene 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.