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The War of the Roses is probably
best remembered as the film with that wild and very funny
(and cool--cool factor is important you know) shot of the
spinning flying plate. A flying plate P.O.V. shot ! A truly
classic shot that's as good as anything Sam Raimi and Barry
Sonenfeld has ever conjured up. The spinning plate shot was
prominently featured (as it should have been) in the trailers
for the film as well. Thanks Danny D and D.P. Stephen H. Burum.
War of the Roses is a gimmicky,
one (mean- spirited) joke film. It's packed with variations
on the joke and depending on your stomach for its subject
matter being slightly exaggerated (in most cases anyway) you'll
find it funny, or excruciatingly cruel , nasty and thoroughly
unpleasant.
Then again you could be like me
and find the film a very mixed bag that telegraphs it punches,
and makes you crave the next nasty prank like a particularly
mean spirited reality cable game show.
The film is about a nasty divorce
(it was written by Michael Leeson, based on the novel by Warren
Adler which was based very loosely on a true story) that escalates
into a full out war of not just practical jokes but assaults
and even worse. We know right from the start of the film (even
if you don't remember the trailers) where this film is headed.
It opens with a lawyer (Danny DeVito) who insists since he
normally charges $450 hour for his time, that we listen to
what he has to say about a particularly nasty divorce case
he was part of. His advise: "…dog people should marry dog
people and cat people should marry cat people."
For most of their 18 years of marriage
Barbara (Kathleen Turner) and Oliver (Michael Douglas) Rose
were by all appearances a rich and happily spoiled couple.
They meet 'cute' in a yuppie way at an auction bidding over
a common trinket and that night they are in bed. He becomes
a powerful corporate lawyer, and she's a housekeeper. She
spends the money decorating the house into what looks like
one of the finest homes anyone could imagine. They raise two
children (a boy and a girl). As the children leave the nest,
Barbara suddenly realizes she wants more out of life and when
she sells a pound of her liver pate' recipe to a friend she
suddenly realizes it is the first money she has earned since
she has been married. She likes the feeling of earning her
own money. She wants a divorce and wants to keep the house.
This sparks an increasingly vicious
'WAR between the Roses. A war that will eventually involve
Not just designer China being hurled around the home, but
pets being used to make Pate', and Oliver urinating on the
main course at a dinner party in front of all the guests.
Oh they eventually try to kill each other of course.
I never liked or cared about any
of the characters in the film. They are portrayed as shallow,
cold, calculating types right from the first time we meet
them. The interest in the film then is in the escalation of
the pranks the couple plays on one another. They are stretched
out pretty thin over the course of this 116 minute film. There's
a lot of yelling ,screaming and some too silly slapsticky
and cartoonish stunts.
The film however isn't a light-hearted
romp, this is fairly intense nasty film that is about a subject
a lot of people aren't going to find all that funny--divorce.
Of course that's the best reason in the world to make this
movie. Unfortunately DeVito the director allows the films
pace to drag and it feels very episodic and repetitious. Some
of the episodes work well, some are flat. You ever listen
to someone drag out a one or two minute joke to five or ten
minutes? Now imagine if sometimes the jokes weren't very funny.
The film at times is very funny
in a twisted dark way, but there are too many repetitive arguments
and too many shots of the same type of exaggerated facial
contortions or looks of shock on Turner and Douglas.
After a while, I wanted the film
to go completely over the top. I wanted the Rose's to just
get it on. Grab a cache of automatic weapons, chase each other
through neighborhood, jump into cars, race over to Goldman
and Sachs and start a little war inside the upscale department
store. That doesn't happen. The film is a bit more realistic
than that. True, we do have folks biting sexual organs and
hanging from chandeliers, but those things are much more likely
happen in a divorce then people chasing each other with chainsaws
down 5th Avenue or Rodeo Drive….then again…
I wanted to like this film more
than I did. The film's pacing is inconsistent and once we
get that brilliant and inventive spinning plate's eye view
show we crave for more of that kind of over-the top visual
creativity and we don't get it. The film is more grounded
than that and so it never takes flight as a truly over-the-top
nasty bit of exploitation or camp. The film also isn't trying
to give us any particularly insight into the deterioration
of a modern marriage and it just feels like a very very long
comedy skit. We don't like the Roses and so we're merely spectators
in their tit for tat escalating war. No one did better tit
for tat than Laurel and Hardy and they did it most successfully
in 22 minute shorts, not in films that stretched out over
116 minutes. So in the end, while I like several things about
the film, I think it all peaks with that fabulous spinning
plate shot. The shot occurs about half-way through the film
and we still have way too much yelling and screaming to get
through before it's over. The drawn out 40 minute extended
chase sequence through the house from the sauna to swinging
on the chandelier is too little, too late.
Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner
who've worked with DeVito in front of the camera in Robert
Zemeckis' Romancing the Stone and the sequel: The Jewel of
the Nile, work well together but there's not really much for
them to do once the divorce wars start. There is plenty of
energy in their performances but subtlety has little place
in this black comic farce..
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