Michael Angelo Covino’s modernisation of the screwball comedy, Splitsville, focuses in on modern dating standards to deliver a consistently funny (if a bit shallow) 105 minutes at the theatre. The characters do often flip how they feel about one another in ways that don’t seem to make total sense other than to further the plot but maybe that’s what the director, cowriter and actor has to say about love in general - no one really knows what they’re doing.

 

When married couple, Carey (Kyle Marvin) and Ashley (Adria Arjona), on the drive to their friends’ holiday home witness a horrible car accident resulting in a woman’s death Ashley, now pondering all that the dead woman never got to experience, announces her desires for a divorce. Carey comedically and literally runs from his (ex)wife and the spiral of pain avoidance via the search for lust and connection begins for all four main characters.

 

Carey stays at the holiday house of Julie (Dakota Johnson) and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino) who he learns have got their relationship figured out - it’s open, no need to worry about cheating or anything like that, they simply don’t mind if the other sleeps with someone else, right? Right?

 

Pretty soon after this Carey and Julie sleep together and Paul unsurprisingly isn’t all that chill about it. We get a They Live long fight scene between the lifelong bros utilising slaps, jiujitsu, furniture destruction, Chekov’s fish tank, experimental eyebrow sculpting all culminating in the plate glass stunt from the trailer. 

 

Carey’s gotta leave the toxic environment of Julie and Paul’s relationship (I do need to mention they’ve got a kid by the way) even though he feels a strong connection to the family’s matriarch and moves back in with Ashley. The life coach lets him stay because with his new eyebrows Carey’s developed a new attitude toward monogamy - to hell with it. Apparently he listened to Ashley and buffoon Jackson’s (played extremely well by Charlie Gillespie) night of passion without minding one bit so why not give it a try?

 

In a long take we learn that Carey is so totally chill with Ashley having other sexual partners that he lets them stay at their apartment even after Ashley dumps them. Suddenly there’s a whole gaggle of emotionally wrecked men and women of all different occupations living in their apartment. Yep, Carey becomes a paragon of emotional maturity and is not hurt at all by Ashley’s conquest of desire. 

 

Despite the absurdity of how Carey is acting we actually do believe that he doesn’t mind Ashley’s infidelity because of his longing for Julie which through Paul’s dodgy accounting and scumbagness he is allowed to act on. Paul ends up going to jail and Carey and Julie get to begin what seems like a healthy relationship.

 

Eventually Paul gets out and wants to sort things out with his wife and Ashley realises she was satisfied with Carey in the first place and yada yada. There’s some good stuff at the climactic birthday scene of Paul and Ashley’s son that I don’t want to spoil. I will confirm that Nicholas Braun’s mentalist turns out to be the MVP of the entire film with less than ten minutes of screentime but I won’t say much more.

 

All the betrayal and change of hearts is very funny but lacking in some sophistication. Firstly, Ashlie and Paul have a child with a knack for sinking jet-skis and revenge pants-ing other kids. It’s never touched on how Russ’ impulsively horned up parents are putting through a psychological ringer and it probably should. The film wants to be funny but it doesn’t present itself as dumb. We’re supposed to believe these characters as flawed people only about one standard deviation from reality, yet there’s a lot of hand waving when it comes to what should be an important character that’s arguably going through more interesting problems than our protagonists. It’s also a major plot point that Carey wants a child and we do see him parenting Russ as an uncle/stepdad/teacher across the film but it’s always in service of depicting Carey’s character as nice. It’s a strange omission considering there’s the time for a golden doodle to be carried twice.

 

I think overall Splitsville is good, it just wants to have its cake and eat it too. The plotting and humor is smart; there's just a child sized hole that a smarter film would fill in rather than cover over.