
Originally posted by
Your Mom
The Roses has some very immediate changes from The War of the Roses. The main characters are different, going from Americans Barbara and Oliver Rose to the British Ivy and Theo Rose. Ivy retains Barbara's dreams of cooking, but Theo is not a lawyer like Oliver and does architecture instead. Gavin, the divorce lawyer played by Danny DeVito in The War of the Roses, is now known as Barry in The Roses, and he's played by Andy Samberg. The War of the Roses mainly focused on that trio, but The Roses has a much larger cast. The additional cast members are a welcome change for the new adaptation. The War of the Roses often felt empty. Audiences rarely got to see how Barbara and Oliver interacted with other people and how that might affect their marriage. In The Roses, Theo and Ivy get to see another struggling marriage between Barry and his wife, Amy, played by Kate McKinnon. Theo faces social pressure from the snobby architect couple, played by Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou. Meanwhile, Ivy gets advice from her culinary co-workers, played by Sunita Mani and Ncuti Gatwa. It's often hard to remember that The War of the Roses is a comedy, just because it gets so bleak. The Roses is much more focused on putting the comedy first, and the supporting cast, filled with comedians, helps with that. The main downside is that The Roses loses some of its bite in order to make audiences laugh, but viewers might also think it's easier to watch compared to The War of the Roses.