Messy people have messy relationships, and they don’t always know what to do with them. That’s the overall message of the flawed but mostly entertaining, balls to the wall, unromantic dark comedy Splitsville, which gives the screwball genre new life.
Buy SplitsvilleAfter Ashley (Adria Arjona) suddenly asks for a divorce when a routine hand job on a road trip goes horribly awry, her good-natured husband Carey (Kyle Marvin) runs to his best friend Paul (director Michael Angelo Covino) and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson) for emotional support. After they tell him that the secret to their marriage is an open one, he is shocked but not too much, especially after he ends up having sex with Julie, which leads to all sorts of hilarious mischief and chaos.
Despite the characters not being very likable and their actions often leading them to mistakes of their doing, I still found this pretty refreshing. It is a romantic comedy for people who hate romantic comedies. It has a lot of farce but also honesty to it. It’s simply about the complexities of modern relationships and how disastrous they can really get. Yes, you can say that it centers on affluent, pretty people with problems, but the fact that they are just as screwed up as everyone else makes the film even more entertaining. It also deals with the subject of open relationships that don’t get explored too often, which gives it a certain type of edge.
There’s lot of diversity, sex appeal, and eye candy that will appeal to everyone, and the vulnerability that the cast allows themselves to have adds to it. Despite the first half being better than the second, and the hilarious fight scene between Marvin and Covino, which could have taken place during the later portion, the cast still makes it work. They all bring their comedic skills to their characters and makes them feel real somehow. If a comedy has honesty to it, then that is what makes it feel like a real one, and Splitsville does just that. It’s Woody Allen (modern relationships) mixed with Howard Hawks (screwball), with some Judd Apatow (raunchiness) added. It’s overall a solid comedy that feels rare and gives 2025 (a really bizarre year) a much needed sense of relief.
Special features include The Making of Splitsville and trailer/TV spots. There’s also a trailer for Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value that plays before the main menu.
