Stream It Or Skip It?

Relationships are messy, and Splitsville (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) leans so heavily into that notion it falls over and smashes everything all over the floor and makes a huge confusional turmoilic (is that a word?) discombobulation. My metaphor doesn’t really work but that’s OK, because it’s messy in the spirit of the movie, which is crisply structured and remarkably precise in its technical presentation, because, like its characters, it’s full of hilarious contradictions. I feel like I’m running on with the run-ons here. OK, that period slowed me down, but these filmmakers – director Michael Angelo Covino, co-writing with Kyle Marvin, who also co-star, and did all of this before in the underrated, offbeat buddy comedy The Climb – charge forward with abandon in this open-marriage relationship comedy, bringing supremely talented co-stars Dakota Johnson’s bangs (and the rest of her supremely talented self too) and Adria Arjona along with them. This is a very funny movie, people. Why haven’t you seen it? 

SPLITSVILLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: I want to start with the Big Fight, but that would mean jumping a touch too deep into the movie. It goes on and on, the Big Fight, and makes the Peter Griffin/chicken guy epic look like a Vine, but first we have to touch on the scene where Ashley (Arjona) tries to revive a dead woman while Carey’s (Marvin) schwantz is fully unsheathed. They’re in the car, see, and she’s giving him a little manual “servicing” while he drives when a minivan crashes and they hop out to help and he doesn’t notice that he’s not entirely decent. They can’t revive the woman and the lady cop on the scene says SIR WHY IS YOUR PENIS OUT and he quickly zips and nicks himself, then is grateful that the EMTs who helped the dead woman also had some butterfly bandages for his dinged-up dong. They’re not even two percent through processing this strange scene when Ashley tells Carey she wants a divorce and he hops out of the Jeep and runs away, through forests and fields and swamps and lakes – he swims too – and the movie will go on like this in rather madcap fashion, almost breathlessly, because its characters are all insane.

Carey, soaking and filthy from his foot journey, finally arrives at the intended place, an opulent beach house owned by his best pal Paul (Covino), his wife Julie (Johnson) and their 10-year-old hellion, Rus (Simon Webster). Carey unleashes his story on them. He’s crushed. Ashley had been cheating on him. They were only married 14 months. He wants to have a kid. He doesn’t want to get divorced. All that. This is when Paul and Julie share that they’ve avoided all this rigamarole by having an open marriage. There are conditions – of course – but the situation eliminates all kinds of problems stemming from very human urges and whatnot. To illustrate how these people have near-zero boundaries, Carey’s in the shower when Paul just busts in and checks him for ticks, then Julie walks in, and Carey once again is hanging hog for everyone to see, then when Paul’s gone, he and Julie bang on the kitchen counter. This happens a lot – seeing his dick, I mean. So be prepared.

None of this should be a big deal, right? What with the open marriage and all. Theoretically. In reality – not that this sublimely absurd movie reflects much reality – I’m not so sure. For the sake of honesty, Carey tells Paul about the kitchen shtoink and then we’re privy to a crazy sudden eruption of violence where these besties throw open hands at each other until they’re wrestling on the floor and then smashing furniture and running up and down steps swinging potentially deadly blunt instruments at each other’s heads. This is the Big Fight. Eventually we get to a point where Carey returns home to Ashley, who’s been collecting her lovers like Precious Moments figurines and letting them stay in her and Carey’s apartment like it’s your grandmother’s ugly curio cabinet from the early ’70s. Everything goes poorly for all involved romantic parties, and the movie does go on about all of it, much to our amusement. I feel like I need to share that Carey’s a gym teacher, Ashley’s a life coach, Paul is a real estate broker and Julie does ceramics, because I’m amazed that these people can hold down jobs.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Splitsville reminds me of how disappointed I was with Materialists. 

Performance Worth Watching: Johnson keeps one foot on the ground, and considering the other seven feet belonging to the other characters are very much not on the ground (they’re attached to bodies that are either flying or drowning or running to or from something), she keeps Splitsville from going off the rails.

Memorable Dialogue: Rus the terror considers “borrowing” a neighbor’s boat. His friend wonders how much it cost. Rus replies with the movie’s deeply ironic thesis: “You don’t know what something’s worth until you sink it.”

Sex and Skin: Significant frontal wang.

Our Take: As they did with The Climb, Covino and Marvin make themselves the butt of many jokes (they’re kinda obligated to, considering they’re everydude schmoes cast across from the likes of Adria Arjona (Hit Man, Andor) and Dakota Johnson (and her bangs)), and are the more obvious buffoons compared to their female costars’ slightly underwritten flightiness. Also in line with the previous film are the chapter headings marking time jumps – the segments almost play like shorts as we drop into the characters’ lives – and an exhilarating visual dynamic that includes long, meticulously choreographed single-take shots – the Big Fight is a dynamo sequence that’s about three-quarters of the way to being John Wick – and smart exploration of the physical sets. Ironically, the storytelling technique functions as a reflection of the chaos of these peoples’ lives, the narrative hodgepodging from one ridiculous scenario to the next, the unbroken takes giving the film a seat-of-its-pants quality underscoring the core truth of the characters: They don’t know what the f— they want or what the f— they’re doing.

To say I struggled at times to keep up with Splitsville is a compliment. Jokes ratatat one after the other as the filmmaking duo push scenes far past their breaking points until either the sets are trashed or the characters’ psychological insides are, well, trashed. This is all incredibly funny. The film is a mess, and that’s intentional. It may be lightly nihilistic in the sense that it has nothing to say about infidelity or marriages – open or closed – beyond the general assertion that we just have to wing it, that we’re all barely keeping our heads above water and whether we listen to those heads or our hearts may ultimately be futile. The disappointment with Materialists stems from the foolhardy application of logic to crazy-ass, stupid-ass romantic love.

Thematically, the film is an exercise in uncertainty – or it could just be an excuse to string together 200 jokes existing in roughly the same topical ballpark. Why bother? the film seems to ask, and the only answer it comes up with is pithy, and punctuated with a question mark: Because? The only thing that seems to matter is, I laughed my ass off at this brilliantly contrived farce.

Our Call: Hey folks, good luck with your illogical and possibly unnecessary but incredibly important relationships! STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.