Try your best to not think about Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner doing their utmost worst at one another’s expense in 1989’s “The War of the Roses” (I still remember the notorious scene of her biting the part of a man’s anatomy he would most not want to have between teeth!) and you’ll likely have a better time watching “The Roses,” which updates Warren Adler’s book for the 21st century.  While far less dark than Danny DeVito’s earlier take on the same material, there is undoubtedly a fair amount of black comedy and uncomfortable situations to make you cringe and laugh simultaneously.

Benedict Cumberbatch is Theo, a London architect struggling to stay awake during a corporate drone fest by excusing himself to the bathroom—though he mistakenly ends up in the kitchen, where he meets Ivy (Olivia Colman) gracefully working her mise en place.  There is instant chemistry, and within moments, they trade the heat of the galley for the chilly walk-in fridge, where they indeed find a more fun way to ratchet up the temperature (hopefully, Ivy, as a professional chef, threw out every item in the walk-in at the conclusion of their fun).

Fast forward a decade, and Theo and Ivy are living a comfortable life on the Northern California coast with their twin children.  Ivy opens a seafood restaurant with a catchily naughty name, and things start taking off just as Theo’s career—and ego—takes a serious hit.  His resentment at Ivy’s success starts out as a slow boil, though before long, he will break out of that oh-so-English veneer in voicing his disdain, which he is surprised but not precisely shocked to learn Ivy shares for him.

By keeping “war” out of the title, director Jay Roach (the Austin Powers films) and screenwriter Tony McNamara (“Poor Things”) manage to keep the Roses from going full-combat until late in the story.  Long before their practical jokes on one another become sadistic and then violent, Colman and Cumberbatch keep things interesting in that British manner of barely containing their fury, while sprinkled with some rather sharp four-letter words frequently heard in Britannia but less so on these shores (my wife, who is English, found the co-stars’ heated banter particularly amusing).

Colman can do no wrong, even if McNamara’s script doesn’t give her and Cumberbatch much of a reason to dislike one another other than professional jealousy and because the story requires it.  Many of the best scenes feature the couple’s friends, Barry (Andy Samberg) and Amy (Kate McKinnon), he a bumbling attorney and she is a free spirit who is rather vocal about opening up their marriage to include trysts with the Roses.  McKinnon is dynamite and earns the film’s best laughs; she somehow makes desperation not only hilarious but downright endearing.

However, Roach and McNamara, in mining for laughs and over-the-top gags, seem to have forgotten that Adler’s story is a tragic story of broken people who realize too late in life that they have nothing in common, and then take out their frustrations on one another in horrific fashion.  By contrast, Theo and Ivy, for all their sparring and violence, realize they do, in fact, love one another.  The film sets up for an explosive conclusion, but then chickens out and rolls credits instead.  It’s an odd choice, and may leave some viewers frustrated.

“The Roses” may not be great cinema, but for its one hour and forty-five minutes, it’s enjoyable to watch two of our great thespians acting out a love-hate relationship.  To quote the old song, love hurts.  Boy, does it ever.

Now in theaters.  Rated R for English profanity that would put American ears to shame as well as some violence and what is sometimes referred to as “comic mischief.”