Theo and Ivy Rose had a happy marriage once. But now, 14 years in, it’s a mess. Clever jibes have turned into bitter insults. Half-hearted apologies have turned into full-blown rage. This film is a tragedy you laugh at—and perhaps wince at, too, given all its language, drug references and sexual asides.
They say life is not a bed of roses. And that may be especially true if the Roses own the bed.
For Theo and Ivy Rose, life was a bed of roses at first. They met in a restaurant kitchen: She was cooking, he was hiding. They talked for a few minutes and then, before Julia Child could crack a lobster, they vanished into a walk-in fridge to (ahem) get to know each other better.
The two Brits matched like crumpets and clotted cream. They moved to the United States, where Theo picked up work as an architect and Ivy picked up a spatula. Theo designed beautiful buildings. Ivy created beautiful desserts. And together, they made two beautiful children.
Yes, this bed of the Roses was rosy indeed. Ivy was happy. The kids were happy (thanks to Ivy’s gifts of sugary goodness). And Theo was especially happy: His biggest project yet, a maritime museum with a massive metal sail suspended above the roof, was just about to open. Even now, it gleamed on the wharf. And Theo’s career gleamed right along with it.
But then, everything came crashing down. The sail. Theo’s career. The life he and Ivy had thought they were building with each other.
Jealousy sprouted in that bed of the Roses. Selfishness. Estrangement. Little slights became big deals. Attempts at apology fell flat.
Now, their delightful British banter comes with more bite. Their shared affection becomes shared affliction.
No, life isn’t a bed of roses—even for the Roses. Theo and Ivy made their own bed, and a thorny one it is to lie in.
The tragedy of The Roses feeds on good intentions. Every flower of kindness comes with a few thorns—and it’s the thorns we ultimately feel. But those acts of kindness deserve a little recognition, too.
For example, let’s step into Theo and Ivy’s marriage 10 years in, when everything feels wonderful. Ivy loves being a mom, and she loves to cook and bake for her kids. But Theo sees Ivy’s culinary genius. So he offers to help her start a restaurant—just as a hobby. Ivy’s thrilled and reluctant: She doesn’t want a business to distract her from being the best mom she can be. But she agrees to try it out, three days a week.
We’ve Got Crabs, despite its suggestive name, is the creation of pure love: Theo’s love of Ivy, Ivy’s love of cooking, their shared love for each other.
And it’s a good thing (superficially) that Ivy started her restaurant. When Theo’s career implodes, that restaurant keeps the family afloat. Ivy agrees to open it more frequently, just until Theo’s back on his feet, she says. And Theo can take care of the kids for a while. “I could build children instead of homes,” he reasons. It feels like a win-win.
And on some level, perhaps it is. The children, Hattie and Roy, thrive under Theo’s less-permissive, exercise-focused hand. They become models of physical fitness, so much so that they’re both invited to a special school for hyper-athletic teens. Theo relishes his new hands-on role as a father, too.
Admittedly, this reversal in parenting comes with some rather serious relational drawbacks for Theo and Ivy. And yet, if the two of them had responded just slightly differently, this movie could’ve been much happier—and shorter.
When Theo and Ivy first meet, Theo tastes a bit of Ivy’s culinary handiwork. He uses Christ’s name as an approving expletive. “Don’t give Him credit,” Ivy says. “It’s all me.”
When Theo suggests that Ivy open a restaurant, he tells her that he’d hate for her dreams to “die on the crucifix of family life.” But he also suggests that Ivy’s culinary talents risk making the kids overweight, Ivy counters. “Buddha was fat,” she says. “And he was great!” Hattie adds.
As mentioned, Ivy and Theo meet in a kitchen. They exchange a few pleasantries, and both are clearly attracted to each other. When Theo suggests they get to know each other better, Ivy says. “But we haven’t even had sex yet.”
“That’s minutes away, though,” he says. And so it is. We see them in the throes of passion in a walk-in fridge—fully clothed as far as we can see.
We do see at least one other instance of passionate affection between the two after they’re married. One lies on top of the other as before having sex. But for the most part, the camera steers clear of the bedroom and instead concentrates on how the couple talk about sex.
Sometimes those references can be quippy invitations to engage in the act. At other times—and more and more frequently as time goes on—they take the form of insults about how their partner performs in bed.
Other couples also make plenty of references to their own sexual escapades (often demeaning their partner or expressing their dissatisfaction). One married female friend of the Roses continually makes uncomfortable and, at times, disturbing advances on Theo. (This includes a “hug” that turns into an act of physical stimulation.) But for all her inappropriate behavior, she’s ultimately committed to her husband: She’d love to have a one-night-stand with Theo. But when it comes to the whole “’Til death do us part” element of marriage, she’s completely satisfied with her partner.
Ivy walks in on two of her employees having sex in a storeroom—both standing up and in a very compromising position (but, again, we don’t see anything close to actual nudity). She accuses another employee, an effeminate male, of engaging in sexual acts with anonymous men in the restaurant parking lot.
Someone asks Theo what it’s like committing yourself to have sex with just one person for the rest of his life. Several people in Ivy’s restaurant start taking off their clothes. (We don’t see anything any more critical than part of a man’s chest.) One character asks Ivy if she’d be willing to take part in a magazine photo shoot. “In the nude?” Ivy asks wistfully.
The name of Ivy’s restaurant is obviously a pun on a venereal disease. Theo speculates that the name might be one of the reasons why business is a bit slow. Why not just call it, he says, We’ve Got Chlamydia?
Guns are fired repeatedly. Knives are thrown. Someone gets smacked in the head with a bit of fruit. A stove is smashed. A small whale nearly dies before being saved by human bystanders. Cakes are smashed and thrown.
Ivy suffers from a very serious raspberry allergy, and the family keeps an EpiPen handy because of it. She requires epinephrine shots a handful of times during The Roses, with the circumstances growing ever more serious with each passing instance.
Theo’s building collapses spectacularly—but fortunately, no one was in it at the time. That said, someone suggests that Theo really should be suicidal in the wake of such a public failure, a suggestion that Theo’s children overhear. For the next several minutes, they speculate about whether he is or not.)
And that’s not the last reference that we hear to suicide. We hear several more. And one of the couple’s friends, Barry, seems to struggle with feelings of hopelessness. When Barry visits the Roses house, which Theo designed, he lets slip that it would be a “cool place to suicide from.”
Theo and Ivy make a number of violent threats to each other, with varying degrees of seriousness. Ivy’s divorce lawyer brings a Rottweiler into a meeting, and she occasionally suggests that the pooch will tear somebody’s face off if her client doesn’t get what she wants.
[Spoiler Warning] The movie suggests that a gas leak causes a house to explode, killing two people in the process.
Nearly 75 f-words, almost 20 s-words and four c-words. We also hear plenty of other profanities and vulgarities, including “a–,” “b–ch,” “p-ss,” “d–k” and “w-nker.” God’s name is misused about 10 times, while Jesus’ name is abused nearly 15 times.
Ivy smokes what appear to be marijuana joints when she’s out of sight of Theo. Ivy’s restaurant patrons ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms (much to Ivy’s horror).
Theo, Ivy and their friends all seem to drink—and sometimes quite heavily. On a vacation to New York City, Theo gets drunk on the plane and causes a disturbance. Later that night, it’s Ivy’s turn to imbibe excessively. She returns to her and Theo’s hotel room pretty snockered, and she says some rather unpleasant things while under the influence.
Ivy gets drunk at a dinner party, and her and Theo’s behavior makes things exceedingly uncomfortable for everyone. We hear references to cocaine.
You’ve probably gathered this much already, but just in case it’s not clear: Theo and Ivy could work a bit more on their marriage.
Their friends often ask if everything in their relationship is OK. For a while, they insist that it is—and they even believe it. But after one such query, they do seek help. The counselor asks them to recite the 10 things they actually like about one another. Their answers range from being wicked back-handed “compliments” to just out-and-out streams of profanity. And as the two of them laugh at just how mean they can be to one another, the counselor tells them that she doesn’t see that there’s any hope for them. (They question whether the counselor is even allowed to say that—and suggest that they expect a hefty discount when her bill comes.)
One wishes the counselor could’ve been a bit more helpful, because the Roses’ marriage quicky spirals downward even from there. Ivy and Theo decide to divorce, and their house becomes a massive point of contention. In their battle for “custody” of the home, the two grow increasingly unhinged. Their game of one-upmanship includes Theo sanding off part of a corn or wart into one of Ivy’s dishes.
Theo and Ivy’s friends take them to a gun range. Everyone talks about how much they hate guns—even though they clearly love firing them.
Before Ivy opens that restaurant, she’s a full-time mom—and a very, very permissive one. She expresses her love through sugar dissemination. And when Theo suggests that it might be unhealthy, Ivy says that this way the Hattie and Roy will learn self-discipline. Hattie promptly throws up in a mixing bowl.
One more note: When Hattie and Roy find out that their parents are getting a divorce, they celebrate. They’re happy that their parents are finally escaping from the downward relational spiral they’ve been on.
The Roses stems from Warren Adler’s 1981 book (and subsequent 1989 movie) The War of the Roses. While The Roses takes plenty of liberties with its source material, all three iterations share two critical elements: First, they center on a relationship that’s no flower, all thorn. Second, they’re classified as a black comedy: In other words, a tragedy you can laugh at.
And The Roses—for all its many, many, many problems—is indeed funny. The writing is sharp and venomous, and stars Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch bring to the table every bit of caustic British wit they can muster.
But as the movie wears on, the film grows less comedic, more tragic.
It’s not that the jokes slow down or stop. If anything, they speed up. But they’re predicated on the difficult and unnecessary death of a marriage. And there’s nothing funny about that.
And yes, I did say the unnecessary death of a marriage. Theo and Ivy’s counselor may think that the couple had no hope of reconciliation. But when I watched the film, I saw plenty of unforced relational errors. Tiny acts of selfishness. Half-hearted apologies. Moments of jealousy, anger and resentment that could’ve been disarmed with just a touch more consideration.
Because the biggest tragedy of all? Deep down—underneath all the poison and vitriol, all the hurt and shame and rage—Theo and Ivy still care about each other.
It didn’t have to be this way.
As mentioned, The Roses has plenty of content problems, and we probably don’t need to reiterate them here. But, if you squint really hard, The Roses can serve as a cautionary tale. It’s a story of coulda shoulda woulda. I could’ve been more considerate. I should’ve apologized. It’s too late now, but I would’ve liked a second chance.
The Roses is a case study on how a marriage can be destroyed not with one big blow, but a thousand cuts. Cut by cut, choice by choice, the Roses’ marriage falls apart until nary a snippet remains.
And that begs the question: Does anybody really need to watch a marriage implode to drive that point home? Moreover, does anybody need to laugh about it?
Editor’s Note: Focus on the Family offers tons of resources to help marriages in trouble—including weekend getaways where husbands and wives can concentrate on each other and their relationship. For more information on restoring and repairing your own marriage, go to focusonthefamily.com/marriage.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
