I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

First off let me say that Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were the perfect choices for this movie! They both gave electric powerful performances and really proved themselves as fine artists. They have awesome chemistry too, we first saw that in Romancing the Stone, but their chemistry in The War of the Roses is a very different kind of chemistry. Yeah sure in the first 15 minutes it shows them making passionate love and becoming infatuated with one another, then comes the kiddies, but really this film is not at all about love, this is NOT a romance story. No it's a movie about an extremely bitter married couple going through a divorce. Neither of the two are willing to give up the elegant nice house they live in. So thus the war begins. "The gloves are off" as Douglas's character states at one point in the film. The script is very well written, it doesn't waste any time or drag on, it entertains the entire runtime, there was not a single moment. Danny DeVito is a talented actor and director, he proves that in this film. Both his acting and his directing are both great. The events that happen throughout the film are bitter and full of anger, but it's very interesting to watch. It runs deep in character development, a movie like this would have to in order to be successful. The movie is not one to view for a "feel good" mood or for when you want something sweet and romantic. If you're in the mood for a dramedy starring two fine actors that is interesting and well written, then I suggest The War of the Roses. 8/10.

Danny DeVito's dark divorce comedy blends the right amount of laughs with quiet, powerful sequences that show glances of these two people still in love with one another. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner are very good as the crazy and uncivilized Oliver Rose and Barbara Rose, but it's Danny DeVito who gives the best performance in the picture, playing Oliver's best friend 'Gavin', a likable, helpful and reliable man that favours neither side, DeVito's character tells the story too, keeping it detailed, interesting and even with its many themes that include romance, comedy and drama. The War of the Roses is not the happiest film to watch for those of you that are enjoying marriage, but nonetheless it's a very good picture with some fairly strong insight.

... and in the end they cook and eat each other, not the dog. That is the long and short of this film and would have made a good epitaph for both of them. Five years earlier, in 1984, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner had teamed up for the wonderful "Romancing the Stone". As for the sequel...we won't go there. Now they have aged a few years and are playing Oliver and Barbara Rose, a couple on the cusp of middle age. The film starts out with Danny DeVito's character, Gavin, an expensive DC divorce lawyer, describing to a client how he should be generous to the point of pain to the wife he is about to divorce. He tells him how the story of Oliver and Barbara Rose changed him from being a cutthroat attorney to what he is today.So the story starts out with their meeting as young people. You know, even from the beginning, the warning signs are usually there, and in Oliver's case, anybody who introduces himself as a genius who is going to be rich and famous someday is probably not going to care too much about his spouse's opinion, and you'd be right.Time passes. Oliver does become the wealthy attorney and the Roses buy the big house in the city. Barbara spends all of her time collecting antiques and keeping up the house. Once her two children get big enough to not really need her anymore, she decides to go into catering - she has become an excellent cook, plus she has cultivated many influential friends through the years in Washington. To celebrate the launching of her new career she buys a monster truck. Oliver belittles her efforts and asks how many hundreds of meals will she have to cater to pay for that truck? You can tell that this is the last of many straws. But it's not until Oliver thinks he has had a heart attack and Barbara feels relief rather than grief upon the news that she realizes the marriage is over.She tells him she wants a divorce. He refuses to believe she would ditch such a wonderful guy as himself. He gets Gavin to act as his attorney and finds out about an old law that allows people to stay in the house while the divorce is being processed. They snipe at each other in a hundred different ways that I'll let you watch and see for yourself.Ultimately, Barbara tells Oliver an untruth, one so horrifying that for the first time Oliver becomes violent. Oliver barricades them both inside the house and they spend the night in actual combat. I'm not so sure he wants to kill her so much as he wants to capture her, because ultimately he wants to keep her. But Barbara's actions leave no doubt she is trying to kill him, because ultimately she wants to be rid of him. In the end they die in the most ironic way possible. With their dying breath he clutches her hand in his, she shoves it away.Basically this is an exaggeration in action but not attitude of your typical divorce story involving any two people who spent decades together and were truly in love once. You can't do what these two people did to each other and not have been madly in love at one time. As they say, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.Let me say something about the book this film was based upon - Danny DeVito REALLY wanted Barbara to cook that dog. However, people convinced him that Barbara would have lost all sympathy if she had intentionally killed an innocent dog and fed him to her husband as pate. She would have come across as mean not insane. I know that his advisors were correct.One thing not shown, maybe just to keep the audience curious, was - who did Gavin marry? We hear him talking lovingly to his wife at the end of the film, saying he'll be home soon. Remember, Gavin was a player and one that only liked the leggiest of blondes prior to the death of the Roses. I'll tell you who that was - it was Susan, the Roses' live in housekeeper who was going to college part time, was very sweet and intelligent, but seemed to be nearing 40 and was not physically attractive in the conventional sense at all. I think the film left that part a mystery just so you could fill in the blanks for yourself, plus it gives you something extra to talk about after the film.I highly recommend this one.

A middle-aged affluent couple hit marital problems and start fighting over the ownership of their mansion. This leads to increasing levels of antagonism and borderline sociopathic behaviour.The War of the Roses is very 80's, very loud and kind of fun. If you want a subtle study of marital breakdown then seek it somewhere else because this most certainly is not it. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner play the warring couple. We follow their story from their first meeting, through the happy early days to the outright marital war that constitutes the end of their relationship. Douglas and Turner are basically let loose on this film to chew the scenery and go cartoonishly over-the-top. And for the most part it's a great deal of fun seeing them do this, as both are very capable actors who can play mildly deranged very convincingly. I felt, however, that the film lost a bit of steam in its final section. As the pair went increasingly berserk in their antics, the film lost me a bit. Having said that, it is a funny film at times and it's quite a bit of fun watching both principal actors going hell for leather. It's probably a film that people going through a divorce can relate to best. It most probably will give them a few ideas.