It's not often I bother watching remakes, but the combination of the currently omnipresent Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in the roles played back in 1989 by Kathleen Tuner and Michael Douglas was too hard to resist. And they do indeed make the film, tearing into each other with gusto as the titular couple whose marriage descends over the years through resentment into outright hatred, mostly brought on by her as the breadwinner of the family, a successful chef, Cumberbatch being the one who raises their children. How it differs from The War of the Roses isn't just in the reversal of the genders, but also by including barbed attacks on the American society they have relocated to, with its Californian new age psychobabble, inability to cope with 'cusswords' and self-subjugation to lawyers. Unfortunately it does go completely over the top in the vitriol content in doing so, but then you couldn't expect much in the way of subtlety from the director of the Austin Powers films, and at least while the force of the disintegration of their relationship beggars belief, the dialogue is sharp and crisply delivered.
6/10
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