Rating: 
Summary: The Most Beloved UNromantic Story of All Time...
Review: "War of the Roses" is one of the best UNromantic (i.e., black comedy) movies ever made. Hot off the successes of "Romancing the Stone" and "Jewel of the Nile," Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, and Danny DeVito reteam for their 3rd movie together. I have a hard time deciding which of the three was best. If you loved the chemistry between Turner and Douglas in the first two movies, you're going to love to hate the chemistry between them now! The Roses HATE each other with such passion. Truly one of the great comedic movies ever made.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Beloved UNromantic Story of All Time...
Review: "War of the Roses" is one of the best UNromantic (i.e., black comedy) movies ever made. Hot off the successes of "Romancing the Stone" and "Jewel of the Nile," Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, and Danny DeVito reteam for their 3rd movie together. I have a hard time deciding which of the three was best. If you loved the chemistry between Turner and Douglas in the first two movies, you're going to love to hate the chemistry between them now! The Roses HATE each other with such passion. Truly one of the great comedic movies ever made.
Rating:
Summary: A COMIC MASTERPIECE
Review: After previously having nothing but on screen affection for each other in the classics, Romancing The Stone and The Jewel Of The Nile, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner play the married couple from hell in this darkly humorous black comedy. A compelling movie from beginning to end with its fast, furious dialogue, great performances all round and shocks along the way, especially towards the end of the film. Top marks must go to Kathleen Turner who gives her character an edge of realism. The cast also includes Danny Devito who plays the bickering Roses' divorce lawyer. Nothing short of a comic masterpiece! Highly recommended!
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Summary: The Dark Comedy Classic About The Divorce From Hell
Review: Among one of my favorite comedies, dark though the material may be, is Danny Devito's War of the Roses. Danny Devito both directed and performed in this late 80's early 90's film. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner star as the feuding couple undergoing a nasty divorce. The commentary above says that this is not a date film, or a film a couple in love should watch. Although in part this is true for its graphic depiction of marital difficulties to a hellish extreme, I stil urge couples to watch. No u don't have to watch it if you're in a particularily romantic mood as this film will turn you off to any romantic ideals you may have about true love. But nevertheless a couple should watch it some time or another as a cautionary tale (like the commentary above said) and a film warning you with the situation being "what if..." what if a marriage goes terribly wrong and you undergo such a painfully malicious divorce and you think twice of an affair or what have you and are glad you're better off than Oliver and Barbara Rose. Of course their divorce battle is so bad it's unrealistic. Example: Oliver and Barbara hurl vicious insults at each other and are constantly bickering and screaming their heads off in anger in an even worse way than the couple in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Oliver ruins Barbara's fancy dinner party and sets the kitchen on fire, runs over her car, while Barbara extracts her revenge by making Oliver believe he has eaten his own pet dog for dinner. The War of the Roses is still an entertaining dark comedy in the lines of such other great dark comedy classics of the same period (early 90's) She-Devil and Death Becomes Her. The pun in the movie's title is the comparison between the historic battles of the Tudors struggle for power in England and the last name of the supposed couple being Oliver and Barbara Rose. Great dialogue, interesting situation, memorable characters and knock-out scenes that imbed themselves in our darkest revenge fantasies- who could forget how Oliver and Barbara practically destroy the mansion they are so passionately fighting for custody of and how they hang on and fall of the precarious chandelier on the high ceiling. Danny Devito proved himself an excellent director in addition to his already credited acting abilities in comedy. A must have for anyone interested.
Rating: 
Summary: A Devastatingly Wild and Frightenly Funny Satire
Review: Before a communal pre-9/11 family-and-peace zeitgeist set in, "American Beauty" shook audiences to the core with it's chillingly real look behind our friends-and-neighbors' outwardly tranquil existence. Years before that Oscar-winning new classic, "The War of the Roses" dealt with many of the same themes in more satirical and explosive ways, with claws bared and punches traded between the couple in question. "American Beauty" hit close to home through its "everyman" Lester Burnham point of view, and its laughs were of the nervous, too-close-for-comfort variety. But at the time of its release, the marriage depicted in "The Roses" was so prepousterously extreme and foreign to most audiences, the film was both hailed and reviled as a sort of anti-family anti-Christ. "The Left" loved Kathleen Turner's empowerment wife and tit-for-tat vengeance against the equally malicious Michael Douglas, while the Religious Right pointed at the film's mean-spiritedness as a sad indictment on the state of "Family Values." Today, after "American Beauty" lay bare the new realities of familial strife, and as Americans themselves confront issues like terrorism, hatred and discrimination in unprecedented ways, "The War of the Roses" seems almost tame. Still, this movie packs more than a few punches (and not only between the dueling Roses.) There are moments of sheer brilliance here that resonate and haunt, as well as inspired performances and frequent cliffhangers that will keep audiences both entertained and challenged. Couples are forewarned to see it together at their own risk! For sheer shock value, few celluloid moments compare to the Roses swinging (literally, and at one another) on their massive chandelier and Turner's take on the meaning of road rage. Add Danny DeVito's wise turn as the narrator, and Douglas' supreme husband role - one of his best ever - and the film SOARS. Truth be told, audiences will flinch at some of the movie's still-shocking moments, and kids under 16 may be frightened to the point of having mom-and-pop-kill-each-other nightmares. But in the end, most of us will love this wry and wrenching laugh riot of a movie.
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Summary: Letting Go is Hard to do.....
Review: Danny DeVito with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Wow, this film isn't what I expected......for those of you who are getting divorced, I have to say this ........learn to say to yourself "it's over"! Because when you refuse to accept reality your life will turn into a living hell. Michael Douglas's character will not give up "the house" his wife decorated to perfection. On a lawyers salary it would be easy for him to get another. Because of his stubbornness, his principles spell the end of any type of communication. Though the characters are broadly portrayed, this movie has a message. Learn to let go and go on with your life!
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Summary: Wonderfully dark comedy!
Review: Danny DeVito, Micheal Douglas, and Kathleen Turner give excellent performances in this superbly directed comedy. Dark satire on marraige and divorce is disturbing at times, but it all adds to the effect of the subject matter. A must see! *Parental discretion is advised.
Rating:
Summary: A funny nightmare!
Review: Employing all the possible charm , feminism and eroticism of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas ` trademark expression as the troubled man , De Vito sketched a sparkling and bloody fable about a marriage who simply reached the point of no return.
Curious parable of slender significance in the most promissory decade in which the female liberation was in its peak , De Vito explores with admirable minuteness the most intimate details of the marriage , their disillusions , disappointments . There is a hidden homage to Divorce-Italian Style that old film of 1962 but with a major grade of sociological acidity .
The initial mockery is like the first movement of a Symphony : it would mean the Allegro Giocoso .
But through a well planed script the laughs diminish progressively , you and me know the things are out of control and now belong to the irrational lands composed among other ambassadors by notable names as the rage , fury , jealous , betray , fury.
The imminent tragedy spies on backstage . And that increasing tension will make of that film an admirable talent exercise and refined good taste .
To Kathleen Turner - one of the emblematic actress who joined talent and sensual attraction of the eighties- together with Theresa Russell, Debra Winger , Isabelle Adjani , Isabella Rosellini , Natasha Kinski, Kelly Le Brock and Gudrun Landgrebe , this film was an additional personal triumph if you sum Body heat , Peggy Sue got married and Crimes of Passion .
The handkerchief 's opening sequence is a classic !
This is the masterpiece of Danny de Vito.
Rating:
Summary: Entertainingly Tragic Comedy of the Eighties
Review: Excellent and entertaining comedy, packed in a good DVD (including over half-an-hour of cut-out material), but the end is rather tragic. The movie abounds with implicit (but subtle) cliches such as : - Women are usually more downright materialistic than men are, and also have a way of getting their fair advantage out of it.
- Husbands are often rude to their wives in public, without even taking the slightest notice of it.
- Sex is typically an object of pure consumption for males, whereas for women sex is more than often just one of many different ways to an end.
- Husbands often end-up as being dominant dog-people, whereas women ususally tend to become emancipated cat-people.
- Outbound marital faithfulness are typical male attributes, whereas down-to-earth conjugal opportunism and emotional realism are more feminine qualities.
- Love, pride and ego are things that cannot be parted in a husband's often confused and puzzled mind, whereas for a woman, a husband's love ususally remains a very abstract concept.
- Husbands are totally irrealistic about the emotional situation and level of personal satisfaction of their wives, like they were living or floating in a world of their own, in an abstract historic reality as to the present state of their marriage.
- For most if not all males, love implies appropriation and possession, and a married wife is most often like a personal investment, an item which cannot be lost under any circumstances, whereas for women, engaging in marriage most often just seems to be just the most attractive option amongst many others, that is at least at the time they want to, a.k.a. aggree to or consent to getting married.
- Whereas the sexual drive is usually sufficient to channel enough of the man's attention and concern to his wife in the early stages of marriage, this drive is usually quickly enough superseded by other things like a carreer, a hobby, which usually end up getting the best of a man's attention and energy. To this trend of things, the wife consents and even tries to collaborate, untill she realizes that she has absolutely no place in them, finds herself as being just another part of the home furniture, which tends to further exacerbate her materialism, and so forth, in a circle which you might call either vicious or virtuous... Although these cliches make the movie likeable to a very wide (presumably male) audience, the movie is also an intelligent and realistic presentation of the different evolutionary stages of a married couple, i.e. meeting, getting married, having children, building up a carreer, buying a house, undergoing mid-life crisis, etc. Marriage and divorce statistics amply prove that married couples seldom have the ressources to overcome the latter evolutionary stages of their marriages (grown up children, crippled libido, etc.), so this movie is another rather caustic, abstract and hyperbolic way of showing how far things can go wrong, when they go wrong, as they usually do, one way or another... De Vito's explicit commentaries are here very welcome, as they provide some kind of a flash-back through a third-party, allowing for a more distanced observation by avoiding a first-degree identification to participants and scenes which are often rather dark, and at times quite brutal. So keep in mind: ONCE IN A LIFETIME COMES A MOTION PICTURE THAT MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN. THIS IS NOT THAT MOVIE. The eighties was the decade of sweeping demystifications. This movie is part of it.
Rating:
Summary: Of Course It Was The Husband's Fault (Always Is)
Review: Had Oliver Rose been considerate to Barbara, and given her the attention she deserved during the years he was building his law practice and she was building their family, the War of the Roses never would have taken place. As is was, Oliver was rude to his wife in the company of others, and then he was oblivious to the fact that he had been rude. And then, years later (after the bad vibes have fermented for a long while) when Oliver thinks he's having a heart attack, he immediately calls upon Barbara for support; after she properly dismisses his emotional wimpishness, he whines like a Democrat at a job interview. What a pantywaist. This is a great twisted comedy, but women may find it disturbing (and they definitely won't think some parts are as funny as men think they are).
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