History Film / TheWarOfTheRoses

** Not to mention [[spoiler: leading him to believe she has cooked his dog and fed it to him]], at which point he pretty much goes apeshit.

* BerserkButton: See EatTheDog below. Oliver was petty and childish in his half-hearted comebacks to Barbara, and he even tries to make peace after she [[spoiler: nearly (and deliberately) kills him in his sauna]], but that event was the turning point that made him every bit as destructive as she was.

* EatTheDog: Subverted. [[spoiler: After Oliver accidentally runs over her cat, Barbara serves Oliver a paté and heavily implies to him that it's his dog, making him go mad with rage and grief. We see later the dog is alive, but Oliver never finds out.]]
** [[spoiler: Played horrifically straight in the novel, and the original intention was for the movie to follow suit. However, test audiences reacted badly, so a very brief shot of the dog getting up was added to establish that it was still alive. Notice that other than this two-second shot, there's no indication in the rest of the film that the dog is actually still alive.]]

* EveryoneHasStandards: When Oliver pisses on the fish, Barbara tells him that she would never humiliate him like this. Also [[spoiler: while she implies that the pate she served him is made of his dog, we can see that the dog is alive outside the house, meaning that Barbara, while angry at Oliver for killing, albeit accidentally, her cat, she would have never been so cruel to repay him like this. [[AdaptationalNiceGuy Averted in the novel and earlier in production, though]], in which she was ''that'' willing]]. Also, Oliver shows genuine concern for Barbara when she's apparently hit by a spliter from the porcelain trinket he's just smashed.

* EveryoneHasStandards: When Oliver pisses on the fish, Barbara tells him that she would never humiliate him like this. Also [[spoiler: while she implies that the pate she served him is made of his dog, we can see that the dog is alive outside the house, meaning that Barbara, while angry at Oliver for killing, albeit accidentally, her cat, she would have never been so cruel to repay him like this. [[AdaptationalNiceGuy Averted in the novel and earlier in production, though]], in which she was ''that'' willing]].

* BigFancyHouse: Too bad they both want it.

* FootsieUnderTheTable: Done early in the movie, during a dinner at the Roses' house, by a female guest to Danny De Vito's character.
* FramingDevice: Danny [=DeVito=], playing a divorce lawyer, tells a client the story of the Roses. He convinces his client ''not'' to divorce his wife. (A non-greedy lawyer? It could be argued Gavin estimated he wouldn't make much of a profit on this case. Or maybe he's traumatized by what happened to the Roses.)

** Gavin implies his own parents' decade-long marriage was also pretty bad.

* CigaretteOfAnxiety: The film starts out with Gavin smoking a cigarette that he had been keeping in a glass case for several years, vowing to never smoke again if he never smoked that cigarette. As he smokes, [[FramingDevice he tells a prospective client about ''why'' he took the cigarette out of the glass case to smoke it]]. Another one of his clients was Oliver Rose, who was in a DivorceAssetsConflict with his wife, Barbara. Said conflict turned nasty, including [[spoiler: an attempt by Barbara to seduce Gavin. The stress of having Barbara come on to him and yet restraining himself from giving in stressed Gavin out so much that he ''smashes'' the glass case to get at the cigarette to smoke it]].

* PyrrhicVictory: Gavin tells Oliver that by not being willing to split the assets and move on, there's more to lose than win.

** Happens again when [[spoiler: Oliver and Barbara are on the chandelier. Gavin arrives to help but just when Oliver says he knew everything would be fine, the the chandelier's support wires start to fail]].

* RevengeIsADishBestServed: Oliver humiliates his wife by pissing on the food she prepared.

* DivorceAssetsConflict: The whole point of the story.

* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:Implied that the entire story is fake, one that a lawyer tells to convince a client not to divorce his wife. Part of it is that the lawyer has knowledge to events he couldn't ''possibly'' have known.]]
* AmoralAttorney: Gavin is an aversion, actively trying to steer both Oliver and Barbara from doing anything stupid or unethical (such as when he rather pointedly sets up a recorder [[spoiler:when Barbara tries to seduce him]] to make it clear sure it couldn't be said he'd done anything untoward).

** Gavin implies his own parents' decade long marriage was also pretty bad.
* BerserkButton: See EatTheDog below. Oliver was petty and childish in his half-hearted comebacks to Barbara, and he even tries to make peace after she [[spoiler:nearly (and deliberately) kills him in his sauna]], but that event was the turning point that made him every bit as destructive as she was.
** Not to mention [[spoiler:leading him to believe she has cooked his dog and fed it to him]], at which point he pretty much goes apeshit.

* BookEnds: The porcelain figurine that began Oliver and Barbara's relationship is the last thing that they fight over. [[spoiler:It ends up smashed to bits by Oliver when Barbara refuses to hand it over to him, even when he was trading her ''everything else'' for it.]]

* CharacterDevelopment: Gavin starts off the story as a skirt chaser and, while not a full on AmoralAttorney, still helps Oliver exploit a legal loophole to stay in the house. In the modern-day segments he's a happily married man, and openly admits his mistakes with Oliver made him a better lawyer.

* CigaretteOfAnxiety: The film starts out with Gavin smoking a cigarette that he had been keeping in a glass case for several years, vowing to never smoke again if he never smoked that cigarette. As he smokes, [[FramingDevice he tells a prospective client about ''why'' he took the cigarette out of the glass case to smoke it]]. Another one of his clients was Oliver Rose, who was in a DivorceAssetsConflict with his wife, Barbara. Said conflict turned nasty, including [[spoiler:an attempt by Barbara to seduce Gavin. The stress of having Barbara come on to him and yet restraining himself from giving in stressed Gavin out so much that he ''smashes'' the glass case to get at the cigarette to smoke it]].

** More consistently however, the trope usually works a lot more in Barbara's favor than Oliver's.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Oliver [[spoiler:destroying the porcelain figurine, which brought them together in the first place]].

* EatTheDog: Subverted. [[spoiler:After Oliver accidentally runs over her cat, Barbara serves Oliver a paté and heavily implies to him that it's his dog, making him go mad with rage and grief. We see later the dog is alive, but Oliver never finds out.]]
** [[spoiler:Played horrifically straight in the novel, and the original intention was for the movie to follow suit. However, test audiences reacted badly, so a very brief shot of the dog getting up was added to establish that it was still alive. Notice that other than this two-second shot, there's no indication in the rest of the film that the dog is actually still alive.]]
* EveryoneHasStandards: When Oliver pisses on the fish, Barbara tells him that she would never humiliate him like this. Also [[spoiler:while she implies that the pate she served him is made of his dog, we can see that the dog is alive outside the house, meaning that Barbara, while angry at Oliver for killing, albeit accidentally, her cat, she would have never been so cruel to repay him like this. [[AdaptationalNiceGuy Averted in the novel and earlier in production, though]], in which she was ''that'' willing]].
* EvilIsPetty: Barbara is definitely driven by this a whole lot more than Oliver. [[spoiler:She's the one who thinks it's a good idea to joke about killing a dog and turning him into paté, and that a single little porcelain trinket is worth more than the house and everything in it, if it means hurting Oliver's feelings just a little bit more.]]

-->'''Oliver:''' (holding up one of Barbara's trinkets) Say it's mine, and you can have everything in this house.

* FallingChandelierOfDoom: [[spoiler:At the end, they both hang ''on'' it, and then Barbara reveals that she loosened the screws to drop it on Oliver. Chekhov's chandelier indeed.]]

* GreyAndGreyMorality: Neither of the Roses is exactly an innocent in events; Barbara goes to extremely spiteful extremes regarding the divorce, but Oliver was a pretty controlling, dismissive, and inattentive husband, all of which fuelled Barbara's resentment and poisoned the relationship.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Barbara spends quite some time and effort [[spoiler:loosening the bolts supporting the enormous chandelier over the foyer. When she accidentally goes over the railing overlooking the hall, she ends up clinging to the chandelier herself. Oliver tries to help her by grabbing on to it, but it's too heavy and pulls ''him'' over the edge too. The combined weight is enough to send the chandelier crashing to the floor, killing them both]].

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: The Aesop delivered by Gavin to his client at the end of the movie, after the Rose couple subvert it to high heaven and refuse to let either gain winning ground up to their demise.

* MurderousThighs: Barbara Rose grabs her husband in a leg-lock when he's trying to get amorous, squeezing the breath out of him. The next day, the injury leads to a hernia, and results in Oliver believing he's having a fatal heart-attack… Which, apparently, inspires him to leave the house to Barbara as his "dying will". She immediately uses it as a legally-binding document against him.

* PetTheDog: In the end, [[spoiler:after they've fallen, chandelier and all, and they both lay dying in the wreckage, Oliver reaches out to his wife to show that he ''still loves her'' after all, and dies]].
** KickTheDog: [[spoiler:And Barbara, as her last act, grabs his hand and tosses it away.]]
** [[spoiler:For what's it's worth, Barbara didn't really have the heart to kill and serve Benny. In the final cut at least. In the original cut and the novel itself, yeah, she'd do it.]]

* PyrrhicVictory: Gavin tells Oliver that not willing to split the assets and move on, there's more to lose than win.

* TableSpace: There's a scene of the couple eating dinner while sitting far apart on a stretched out table.

* TemptingFate: When Barbara tells Oliver she wanted to smash his face in, he offers her to do so. She does. When she is in her truck about to run him over ordering out of his convertible, he tells her, "You're gonna have to kill me." She damn near does.

* XMustNotWin: The driving point of the couple's war, eventually to their own detriment. They refuse to submit the house to the other, and slowly drive themselves insane with every petty attempt to destroy the other. Perhaps best exemplified with the ExactWords example above.

* OnlySaneMan: Danny [=DeVito=]'s character.

* PsychopathicManchild: Both Barbara and Oliver act like spoiled kids fighting over who gets the top bunk, only their fighting causes enormous harm to each other.

* IAteWhat: At the end of the book/movie, Barbara Rose makes dinner for Oliver, who compliments her paté. She says, "Don't thank me. Thank Benny." Benny is Oliver's dog.

* AnAesop: Divorce proceedings may try to remain civilized, but can quickly devolve into acrimony, greed, and even physical violence. The least harmful way is for the parties to part ways as quickly and cleanly as possible.