O livia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch , the two most prestigious English screen actors in the world, resoundingly butt heads in this feel-bad movie; it is oddly, but not uninterestingly, composed throughout in feelgood romcom style. In casting terms, this is a Borg-McEnroe 10-set tie-break leading to play being suspended even as the leads bring every microlitre of their technique to the game.

They play Ivy and Theo, two high-achieving professionals whose marriage becomes a black-comic Chornobyl of toxic hate; it is adapted from the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, which was previously filmed in 1989 with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Tony McNamara writes this new version and the director is Jay Roach, known for Austin Powers and Meet the Parents. Colman and Cum

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