Plot

A married couple tries everything to drive each other out of the house in a vicious divorce battle.

Oliver and Barbara Rose live happily as a married couple--until she starts to imagine what life would be like without him and likes what she sees. They both want to stay in the house, so they begin a campaign to force each other to leave. In the middle of their fighting is D'Amato, the divorce lawyer, who gets to see how far each will go to get rid of the other, and boy, do they go far.—Rob Hartill

Levelheaded lawyer Gavin D'Amato has a worried client sitting in his office. He is going through a divorce, obviously his first. To make sure he plays his cards right, Gavin tells him the story of what happened to a colleague and former client named Oliver Rose. He was a fair-game law student who met Barbara, a gymnast who lived for the thrill of the moment. They shared a love for exquisite possessions and married right away. Their differences finally caught with them after 18 years, and they ended up in a bitter divorce battle. But divorce was anything but a solution, as custody of their possessions escalated beyond anyone's, even Gavin's help.—Don Hoffman

It's been 17 beautiful, prosperous years full of love and understanding for once-inseparable lovebirds Oliver and Barbara Rose, but now the love is gone, and they seem determined to let all those years go down the drain. They desperately want out, except for one little problem: neither is willing to leave empty-handed. Under those circumstances, they are bound for an unnecessary, yet explosive and utterly catastrophic, head-to-head collision, in a no-holds-barred civil war between the sexes with their lavish mansion as the precious spoils of war. Without a doubt, their story is a sad one, however, is any marriage destined to succeed? After all, their divorce lawyer is deeply skeptical.—Nick Riganas

As a cautionary tale, Washington D.C.-based divorce lawyer Gavin D'Amato tells a potential new client the story of Oliver and Barbara Rose. They fell in love at first sight when they were both poor college students--he on scholarship at Harvard Law, and she on a gymnastics scholarship at Madison--meeting by chance at an auction when they were both bidding on the same art piece. Through the early part of their marriage, both seemed to be striving for the same thing: prestige and the image of perfection, coming at it from two different directions. Oliver, the breadwinner, did everything he could to impress his bosses to make partner to make more and more money, while Barbara spent that money creating what they both considered the perfect showcase home. She had stumbled upon and bought it relatively inexpensively on a white lite. After ostensibly making it the perfect home and becoming empty-nesters with their two children going off to college, Barbara realizes that she has lost any sense of herself and largely blames this on Oliver, who is oblivious to her unhappiness--until she asks for a divorce. Both are unwilling to give up the house, the symbol of that prestige and perfection, in the divorce settlement. Both are living in the house during the divorce proceedings, with both their children, when home, and their housekeeper, Susan, being pawns and potential collateral damage in each doing whatever to get the other to leave and give up the house in the settlement.—Huggo

Gavin D'Amato (Danny DeVito), a prominent Washington DC divorce attorney, is in his office discussing a divorce case with a taciturn client (Dan Castellaneta) seated in a chair. Noticing the man's determination to divorce his wife, Gavin decides to tell him the story of one of his clients: the Roses.

17 Years Earlier.

Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas), a student at Harvard Law School, meets Barbara (Kathleen Turner) at an auction on the island of Nantucket, where they bid on the same antique: mistakenly undervalued 18th-century Chinese homunculus statuette. Oliver chats Barbara up and they become friends. When Barbara misses the ferry home, the two end up spending the night together at a local inn. Eventually after a whirlwind romance, the two get married.

Three years later, the Roses have a family of boisterous twins, Josh and Carolyn, who distract the workaholic Oliver from his efforts to complete a Harvard University law degree. One Christmas Eve, Oliver is busy with his studies and doesn't want anyone to distract him, but Barbara insists they go for a walk and surprises her husband with an antique Morgan automobile.

Five years later, Barbara and Oliver relocate to Washington DC where Oliver becomes an associate lawyer at a firm with Gavin, and angles for a more prestigious role. Sometime later, Barbara discovers that the owner of her "dream home" has died, and the Roses move into the mansion. Over the next six years, Oliver becomes a senior partner while Barbara refurbishes the house. Once the remodeling is complete, Barbara announces her plan to start a small business, selling pâté to fellow housewives. Anticipating a lucrative enterprise, Barbara buys an enormous sport utility (SUV) truck for $25,000, which results in a minor argument with Oliver who becomes upset that Barbara purchased an expensive vehicle without informing him first. As her business flourishes and the Rose twins prepare to attend Harvard, Oliver persuades his wife to hire a live-in housekeeper named Susan (Marianne Sägebrecht).

At first, Oliver and Barbara's marriage is happy and content as both of them share their materialist ways and views of modern American society with purchases of expensive furniture and clothing to show off their wealth. However, cracks seem to be forming in the family, such as the children growing up overweight because the shallow and insecure Barbara thinks that spoiling them with candy treats is positive, and they do not get in shape until their teen years. The personal differences between Barbara and Oliver that they both ignored when they were first married become more oblivious, such as Barbara being a cat lover and purchasing a pet cat for herself, while Oliver is a dog lover and purchases a pet dog for himself. Both Barbara's cat and Oliver's dog do not get along with each other, forcing the couple to keep both pets separate from one another... an ominous foreboding.

Soon, Barbara appears to grow tired of her life with Oliver, and at the same time, begins to dislike him and everything he does. As Barbara becomes more cold and distant, Oliver, for his part, cannot understand what he has done to earn Barbara's growing contempt of him. The reason being is that Oliver remains oblivious to his controlling, self-centered, indifferent and generally dismissive behavior toward her.

One evening, Oliver forgets to read her catering business contract due to having a get together with some clients at their house... and also forgetting to tell Barbara until the last minute about the gathering and insisting that she cook dinner for the whole group. Barbara quickly becomes angry and hostile at watching Oliver spend all of his time with his clients, telling unfunny jokes and typically expressing his fake laughter and fake politeness to his clients. Later that evening after the guests have left, an argument ensues between Barbara and Oliver about the events which leads to Barbara using her strength as a former gymnast to squeeze Oliver's waist between her thighs.

At a lunch meeting the following day at a local restaurant with some business associates, Oliver convulses in pain and believes he is dying from a heart attack, but soon learns he has a harmless hernia and attributes it to Barbara's leg grip the previous evening. Barbara fails to arrive at the hospital, forcing Gavin to drive Oliver home. After arriving home, Oliver begins an argument with Barbara over not showing up when Gavin contacted her about his hospitalization, and even has a hand-written note that he scrawled when he thought he was near death, declaring to Barbara: "All I am and all I have I owe to you." However, Barbara is unmoved. She confesses that she felt happy at the prospect of Oliver's death and asks for a divorce. She proves that she is serious when she physically punches Oliver in his face. Shocked by Barbara's moment of physical violence and domestic abuse, Oliver immediately and reluctantly agrees to a divorce.

Sometime later, the couple meets Barbara's lawyer, Harry Thurmont (G.D. Spradin), who states that Barbara wants nothing from Oliver but the house and all of its contents. Oliver argues that he is legally entitled to half of everything they own. When Oliver insists that his earnings paid for the home, the attorney quotes Oliver's "deathbed" note. Enraged, Oliver walks out and declares war on his wife, vowing that she will never get the house. Aware that it might not be wise to represent himself despite being a professional lawyer, Oliver hires Gavin on retainer to be his legal representation.

Barbara initially throws Oliver out of the house, but he moves back in a few days when he and Gavin discover a legal loophole that allows him to stay in the house while the divorce is pending. Barbara immediately begins plotting to remove Oliver from the picture.

On Christmas Eve, the Rose family awkwardly gathers around their decorated tree. When the Christmas tree lights dim, Barbara declares that there is a short circuit and they should unplug the lights, but Oliver typically dismisses Barbara's concern and insists the blackout is due to a misplaced ornament. Later that evening, the tree catches fire and Barbara gleefully gloats over Oliver's error.

Oliver contacts Gavin and comes up with several ideas to get Barbara to leave. Oliver meets with Barbara and even goes as far as to offer her all the furniture, antiques, and valuables in the house in exchange for letting him have it as an empty shell, but Barbara refuses, accepting nothing less than everything. Barbara begins to show signs of a mental breakdown when she shows up at Gavin's office and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce him as a way to make him side with her.

On another night, Barbara refuses to share her sleep medications with Oliver, and he accidentally kills her beloved cat on his way to the pharmacy. Although it was an accident, Oliver unfairly blames Barbara for the incident by not giving him what he asked for, while Barbara mistakenly thinks that Oliver deliberately ran over her cat--refusing to believe that it was an accident. Taking revenge, Barbara locks Oliver in his basement sauna the following day where he nearly dies from heatstroke. Although she lets him out, hoping he will finally relent and leave the house, Oliver's conviction only grows stronger and he later saws the heels off Barbara's extensive shoe collection in retribution.

In another effort to compromise, Oliver offers Barbara a generous sum of cash in exchange for ownership of the house in his name, but Barbara continues to refuse to settle and insists that since she found the house, raised their two children in it, fixed it up and bought all of the furniture, the house belongs to her since she never had anything in her life while growing up or ever had any close family. Oliver tries here to reconcile with Barbara, but his inability to admit his own personal faults only drives her further away.

Gavin never tells Oliver about Barbara's attempt to seduce him... aware that Oliver will not react well to this latest underhanded tactic of hers. But during another private legal strategy meeting with Gavin, Oliver hatches a plan to personally divide up the house into individual areas for himself and Barbara. The frustrated Gavin finally tells Oliver that they are in a no-win situation, and that if the divorce case goes to trial, any judge or jury would probably rule in Barbara's favor. Gavin advises Oliver to surrender his claim to the house, divorce Barbara, move out for good and re-build a new life for himself with his own fortune. Oliver reacts very badly to this and in response, he fires Gavin as his lawyer.

Over the next few weeks, Oliver and Barbara begin spiting and humiliating each other in every way possible. Oliver takes his revenge against Barbara by interrupting a dinner that she is hosting for her clients, humiliating her and urinating on the food, leading to a physical fight in which the pair destroy their furnishings; the stove, most of the furniture, Staffordshire ornaments, and plate ware. Though worried about their clearly warped parents, the children leave for college and the housekeeper Susan quits, leaving Barbara and Oliver all alone in the house.

One month later, Oliver eventually calms down and attempts to speak with Barbara in a civilized manner over an elegant dinner, but he still will not move out or accept that their marriage is over. It is here that Oliver finally reaches his breaking point when Barbara serves him a paté which she cruelly implies was made from his beloved dog (although the dog is alive and well outside). Oliver angrily attacks Barbara, who flees into the attic to hide. Oliver then boards up the entire house to prevent her from escaping as he now plots to kill her, while she plots the same thing.

Just then, Susan arrives back into the house to collect her very last paycheck and becomes concerned for the couple when Oliver forces her to go away. Afraid that Oliver and Barbara really might attempt to kill each other, Susan phones Gavin for help and he agrees to come to the house to help.

A little later that same night, Oliver drunkenly sings to Barbara and lures her out of hiding with the announcement that he has a "gift" for her: the 18th-century Chinese homunculus statuette that Barbara won in the estate auction the day they met. As she reaches for it from the top of the stairs, Oliver pulls a string he attached to the ornament and snatches it away. Referring to the antique that provoked their bidding war years earlier, Oliver declares that he will move out and give Barbara everything in the house if she says: "It's mine." Twisting his words, Barbara replies, "It's mine," inferring that the homunculus belongs to her. In response, Oliver smashes the artifact with an iron poker and Barbara bends over in pain, covering her eye. Oliver runs up the stairs to help, but she retaliates, hitting him with the rod. Losing balance, Barbara falls through the banister and clings for life to the foyer's chandelier. Oliver offers to save her in return for the house, but she still refuses to be rescued. When he tries to catch the chandelier with the iron poker, he, too, is trapped on the light fixture. Just then Gavin arrives with Susan and they see from one of the boarded windows Oliver and Barbara hanging onto the chandelier. He attempts to find a ladder from the garage.

While they are trapped on the chandelier, Oliver admits to Barbara that despite their hardships, he always loved her, but Barbara does not respond. Gavin manages to get a ladder, but he is forced to use it as a battering ram to knock the locked front door down. Just as Gavin manages to break into the mansion, the chandelier snaps and falls to the floor, and Oliver and Barbara are both fatally wounded. With his final breath, Oliver reaches his hand out to Barbara's shoulder, and Barbara uses her last strength to hit Oliver's hand away, revealing that she truly did not love him anymore and she indeed wanted him dead.

Back in the present, Gavin warns his new client that there is no such thing as a "civil divorce" and suggests that he try to restore love in his faded relationship with one of two ways: be generous and ask how much the client's wife wants from him, or try to reconcile and see what brought them together and what is driving them apart. After the nameless and mute client leaves, the attorney then finishes his last cigarette and goes home to his new wife.