Once in a lifetime comes a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love all over again. This is not that movie.
1989-12-08
$26.0M
116 min
Barbara and Oliver Rose live happily as a married couple. When Barbara starts to wonder what life would be like without Oliver and likes what she sees, the two begin a campaign to force each other to leave their house, with their divorce lawyer D'Amato caught in the middle.
"The War of the Roses" is an uncompromising film based upon the eternally topical subject of divorce. It fits neatly into the same category as "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989), but where that yawn fest ruminated upon the boring notion that a man can never be just good friends with an attractive woman without sex becoming an inevitable issue and getting in the way of a beautiful friendship this film ponders the notion is there any such thing as an amicable divorce? The film which results from this preponderance is a brilliantly bitter and ugly one that takes the issue to the absolute extremes of human behaviour like never before as the luxurious marital home is gradually reduced to a shadowy and dangerous battlefield. Danny DeVito excels magnificently behind the camera as director and he achieves the admirable feat of producing eye catching visuals which don't dominate or derail the entire film.
