The War of the Roses (1989)

Director: Danny DeVito

Cast: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, G.D. Spradlin

Have I Seen it Before: Several times. It’s one of my parents’ favorite films. Before you get to deeply concerned with how grim things were while growing up in the Boyle compound, dear old dad is a divorce lawyer…

Although he’s only ben doing divorce law for the last fifteen years or so…

Anyway.

I was so lukewarm on The Roses (2025) this year, that it absolutely stuck in my mind to come back around to the original. I never got the sense that Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman ever really hated each other.

Did I Like It: One never gets the sense that Douglas and Turner don’t hate each other, even when they’re supposed to be in love and can’t keep their hands off of each other. The Jewel of the Nile (1985) might have been rougher on them than we were led to believe.

DeVito is a tragically, perhaps even criminally undervalued maestro of the dark comedy, and this might be his greatest foray into the genre. A lesser director would have been content to let the chemistry of Douglas and Turner carry the film through, and probably would have gotten away with it, too. An above average director would have been able to take the material as it was presented and probably would have made an enjoyable enough movie. DeVito sees how much everyone enjoyed Romancing the Stone (1984) and thought it would be great if we got to see the two of them murder each other.

There’s a great amount of style on display here, as well. Far more than a relatively novice director might have been expected to use. The dark comedy is augmented by DeVito’s sense that this isn’t just a reframing of Douglas and Turner’s screen image, but an opera at its core. There’s moments where the production value is that of a stage production, with the backgrounds of Washington DC seeming less like locations and more like set design. I don’t think most people pick up on that when they first see the film. I certainly didn’t.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Alfonso Arau

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure, but it’s probably been twenty years or more. Before motion capture carried the day, I was a Zemeckis completist.

Did I Like It: There’s a unique pleasure in not keeping a movie generally beloved—and, indeed, I remember liking—in regular rotation. I would give almost anything to see something like Back to the Future (1985)* with new eyes. Thankfully, I took to this film with only the dimmest of memories, and it was essentially like I was taking it in for the first time.

The story unfurls with such a breathless confidence that I’m surprised it isn’t taught as an example in screenwriting books, and it’s a real bummer that more work from Diane Thomas—including a supposedly lost draft of a haunted house-centric third Indiana Jones film—didn’t see the light of day before her untimely death.

The screenplay could blow away in the wind if the chemistry between Douglas and Turner wasn’t enough to sell entire movies on their own. There are few pairings on screen who are more fun to kind of/sort of hate each other. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at The War of the Roses (1989).

The film is probably a little less ageless than Zemeckis’ other epics of the 80s, and I can’t understand why/how Alan Silvestri was talked into a sax and synth-heavy score. Honest to God, the whole film sounds like the opening titles for an episode of Siskel & Ebert. I’m not even opposed to that in these circumstances, I just know that a different approach might have moved the film from merely charming to truly timeless. I know all the principals involved can ultimately do better.

That is a minor complaint, when so much of the film works so thoroughly, but it might just keep me from re-watching it too soon. Maybe in twenty years or so I can take it the movie in again as if it was almost new.

*Which would not exist without this film, as Zemeckis’ main claim to fame prior to ‘84 was being at least partly responsible for the only flops with which Steven Spielberg was associated.