The film pairs Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as Ivy and Theo, high-achieving professionals whose marriage devolves into black-comic toxicity. Tony McNamara's screenplay and Jay Roach's direction adapt Warren Adler's 1981 novel, keeping Ivy as a brilliant chef while updating elements: Theo becomes an architect whose career collapses and who turns into a househusband as Ivy rises to global foodie fame. The movie is oddly composed in a feelgood romcom style despite aiming for feel-bad dark comedy. The leads remain technically superb and watchable, but the emotional shift from love to hate lacks credibility and the darker arc loses momentum.
They play Ivy and Theo, two high-achieving professionals whose marriage becomes a black-comic Chornobyl of toxic hate; it is adapted from the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, which was previously filmed in 1989 with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Tony McNamara writes this new version and the director is Jay Roach, known for Austin Powers and Meet the Parents.
Colman and Cumberbatch are acting black-belts and they are never anything other than watchable, but as they shout and wince and snap and zing their way through the dialogue, it's difficult to believe that they really love each other; and then later really hate each other. The film loses its nerve on this latter point. The new version keeps a little more of the novel, in the sense that Ivy is supposed to be a brilliant chef,
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