THE ROSES

Name: THE ROSES
Item: THE ROSES
Author: Review

"Marred by an Ironic Twist and Excessive Foul Language"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

THE ROSES is a satirical drama about a marriage between an English architect and an English chef in Northern California. Theo and Ivy Rose get married, move to California and have two children. Ivy opens a small crab restaurant to express her culinary gifts. However, Theo’s artsy building for a sailing club has structural flaws and is destroyed by an unexpected powerful storm. Theo becomes an unemployed house husband, but Ivy’s restaurant suddenly gets noticed. She becomes an internationally renowned chef while Theo starts training their children to be health conscious super-athletes. Resentment builds up. They drift apart. Theo tries to save the marriage by building Ivy a dream house, but it doesn’t work. Will they end up getting divorced or kill each other?

THE ROSES is, by turns, witty, scary, touching, heartwarming, dramatic, and nearly always compelling. Despite the terrible dissolution of the marriage in the movie, the ending validates the marriage. However, an ironic twist undercuts that. THE ROSES is filled with an excessive amount of strong foul language and some lewd, violent content. So, THE ROSES is ultimately unacceptable.

Content:

(B, HH, Ho, PC, FR, LLL, VV, SS, N, AA, DD, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light morality tale about how little slights in a marriage, coupled with jealousy and resentment, can build up and lead to divorce and even murder, if allowed to fester, but a decision to step back from the abyss and affirm marriage comes with an ironic humanist twist, plus a major restaurant employee of the female lead is homosexual and there’s a joke in one scene about him having homosexual trysts in the parking lot (the movie’s approach to the issue here is politically correct), and a comical reference to Buddha being fat in one line of dialogue;

Foul Language:

At least 84 obscenities (including at least 61 “f” words), seven strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and 13 light profanities;

Violence:

Strong and light marital violence such as married woman starts throwing a cake she baked for a house warming party with their friends (she also angrily throws some cake at her husband) as an argument they’re having gets out of control, after the guests have left the married couple start throwing objects at one another (including kitchen knives), the couple starts breaking one another’s precious objects, a storm tears an artsy building apart, and the building eventually comes tumbling down, and people save a dying beached whale;

Sex:

Woman discovers two of her restaurant employees fornicating in the back of the restaurant, implied fornication between an unmarried couple who soon get married and have two children, some lewd comical and non-comical sexual references, a married friend of the main married couple is often flirting with the husband in lewd comical ways, but nothing happens, hallucinogenic mushrooms get into some restaurant food one day, and customers start to disrobe, and one of the lead female’s male employees is homosexual, and she comically berates him in one scene about having homosexual hookups in the parking lot;

Nudity:

Upper male nudity when restaurant customers start to take off their clothes when hallucinogenic mushrooms get into all their food;

Alcohol Use:

Some alcohol use and drunkenness;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Some tobacco smoking and restaurant customers accidentally eat hallucinogenic mushrooms in one scene; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Jealousy, bitterness, resentment builds up in a marriage until, by the end, the couple seriously thinks about killing each other.

More Detail:

THE ROSES is a satirical drama about the gradual dissolution of a marriage between an English architect and an English chef living in Northern California, so the question is whether the husband and wife will end up getting a divorce or killing one another. THE ROSES has many witty moments interspersed with moments of dark conflict mixed with moments of family bliss, but a validation of marriage at the end comes with an ironic twist, and the movie has lots of strong foul language.

Theo and Ivy Rose meet in a fancy restaurant kitchen, where Ivy is creating a delicious meal. They get married, move to California and have two children, a boy and a girl. Meanwhile, Rose opens a small crab restaurant to express her innate culinary gifts. However, Theo’s artsy building for a sailing club has structural flaws and is destroyed by an unexpected powerful storm. So, he becomes an unemployed house husband while Ivy’s restaurant suddenly gets noticed and becomes a booming business. Resentment builds up, especially when Ivy becomes internationally renowned, and Theo starts training their two children to be health-conscious super-athletes. Ivy begins to feel that she has little part in her children’s lives.

Theo and Ivy drift further and further apart. Theo tries to save the marriage by building a dream house for Ivy, but it doesn’t work. So, the questions is, will they end up getting divorced or kill each other?

Based on a novel titled THE WAR OF THE ROSES, THE ROSES is, by turns, witty, scary, touching, heartwarming, dramatic, and nearly always compelling. Despite the terrible dissolution of the marriage in the movie, the ending ultimately validates the marriage. However, an ironic twist undercuts that. THE ROSES is also filled with an excessive amount of strong foul language and some lewd, violent content. So, THE ROSES is ultimately excessive and unacceptable, despite any moral conclusions its tragic story may generate about what not to do in a marriage.

The novel was made into an American movie in 1989. The 1989 movie was really depressing.

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