Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman Declare War

There have been 36 years, roughly 40 million divorces and a seismic cultural shift (or several) since Danny DeVito’s dark, down-with-love comedy “The War of the Roses” pitted Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas against one another, but the marketing pitch for that movie still makes me laugh.

“Once in a lifetime comes a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love again,” teased the tagline. “This is not that movie.”

Bringing fresh wit and 21st-century gender politics to Warren Adler’s witheringly anti-romantic-comedy novel, “Meet the Fockers” director Jay Roach has dropped the “war” from “The War of the Roses.” His take — which isn’t quite a remake — may be less belligerent, but it’s still got bite. By the end, seemingly well-matched life partners Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch) are trying to kill each other under the highly combustible roof of their custom-built love nest.

But for the vast majority of this clever redo’s running time, Ivy and Theo are little more than a thorn in one another’s side. Coming on the heels of Noah Baumbach’s brutally honest “Marriage Story,” “The Roses” isn’t trying to compete, but recognizes that there’s plenty more to say about how matrimony can devolve into acrimony over time, especially when the power shifts between spouses.

Tony McNamara’s script opens in couple’s therapy, where the British duo demonstrate that their relationship thrives on the kind of biting repartee that might send Americans reaching for the straight razor. Tasked with sharing 10 things they love about each other, Ivy and Theo tick off insults like “I’d rather live with her than a wolf.” The therapist reacts in horror, but judging by the wicked smiles on their faces, this kind of dry, mutually deprecating humor still turns them on.

That attraction is written clearly enough, but there’s something missing in the chemistry between Colman and Cumberbatch — namely, a spark. Without that, Roach’s “Roses” is a bit of a misfire, at least compared with the scorching passion we felt between Turner and Douglas, who made “War” five years after heating up the screen in “Romancing the Stone.” By casting a screen couple with preexisting chemistry, DeVito’s movie felt like checking in on a rom-com twosome, only to learn what we so often suspect with those movies (that they don’t live as happily ever after as advertised).

“The Roses” wants us to believe that Ivy and Theo have the kind of insatiable sex life where they can hardly keep their hands off each other, introducing that dynamic via a steamy meet-cute in the restaurant kitchen where Ivy works. Within five minutes of exchanging how-do-you-dos, the two are shagging in the walk-in freezer. For the rest of the movie, they flirt like newlyweds — which stands in stark contrast with their married friends.

Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon play one couple, Barry and Amy, whose bed has clearly gone cold. She’s constantly coming on to Theo in one of the movie’s weaker running jokes. Meanwhile, Rory (Jamie Demetriou) and Sally (Zoë Chao) let the unspoken resentments between them simmer just beneath the surface. If you really want to see mismatched lovers lay into one another, watch Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney drive each other crazy in Stanley Donen’s underrated “Two for the Road.”

For years, Ivy and Theo have made it work — “The Roses” perkily recaps the highs and lows — navigating their noncompatible parenting styles well enough to raise a respectful son and daughter. Ivy spoils the kids with sweets (even though raspberries send her into anaphylactic shock), while Theo is more of a taskmaster, treating them like boot-camp recruits. That much of the movie has a zingy Hollywood feel.

The Roses don’t remotely resemble a real couple; they’re more like the enviable, uncomplicated folks who populate Nancy Meyers movies. He’s a hotshot architect. She’s a confidence-challenged chef. And then one day, his big project collapses, taking his career right along with it. Now it’s Ivy’s time to shine. She’s always wanted to open a crab shack, but has no sense for promotion, and though Theo is superficially supportive, it doesn’t take long for depression and jealousy to intrude.

A whole movie could be made about this shift in roles and how an ambitious man is impacted by having his professional identity so brusquely derailed (in fact, several have, including that ripe-for-remake ’80s phenom “Mr. Mom”). But the transition happens so quickly, we never see the Roses face hardship, which is where many couples’ compatibility really gets tested. Even when Ivy and Theo are supposedly annoying each other, their banter is still 10 times more articulate and interesting than anyone you’ll find on the apps, such that I’d happily be married to either of them.

It’s hard to make the leap from there to watching these two humiliate and destroy one another for sport. As everyone around them (except Allison Janney’s no-nonsense attorney) insists they de-escalate, “The Roses” starts to feel like precisely the movie its predecessor wasn’t — namely, a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love again. For starters, the conflict doesn’t occupy half the plot, the way it did in DeVito’s movie. Here, it’s more of a skirmish than a full-blown war, which presumably explains why the pun was struck from the title.

As the saying goes, “The Roses” by any other name wouldn’t have turned out as sweet.