September 8, 2025 · Watch the official trailer
“Splitsville” is the kind of movie that cinephiles are going to discover on a streaming service a year and a half from now and wonder, “Why was this movie never released in theaters?”
Yet, in the doldrums of late August and early September at the cinema, this quirky twist on the modern romantic comedy staggers onto the big screen with almost zero marketing, despite having an A-list actress like Dakota Johnson at the forefront.
Written by two of the film's leads and directed by one of them, “Splitsville” is an off-kilter, antagonistic yet quirky rom-com centered around Carey, a man seemingly at the peak of his life when his wife of a year suddenly asks for a divorce. He quite literally runs to his married best friends, whose revelation set the stage for an increasingly implausible sequence of events that will turn the lives of everyone involved upside down.
From the opening moments, audiences are almost forcefully pushed into rallying behind Carey, played by Kyle Marvin, as his wife makes a last-ditch, sexually charged effort to save their marriage only to ask for a divorce moments later.
The surreal and bizarre nature of the film's exceptionally ridiculous plot further nudges viewers towards Carrie's side, though it’s unclear whether it’s Marvin’s work in the film or the structure of the screenplay that’s responsible for generating so much sympathy for Carey’s plights.
Marvin himself leans into the lightly dense and naïve aspects of Carey with aplomb and there’s definitely genuine emotion shown in the more tender moments of “Splitsville,” especially in Carey’s mentorship of Russ, Paul and Julie’s pre-teen son who attends the school Carey coaches at.
The film’s biggest narrative issue, however, is that Marvin fails to generate believable chemistry with “Hit Man” star Adria Arjona as Carey’s wife Ashley, nor Dakota Johnson’s Julie, which heightens the implausibility of the situation, bordering on breaking the suspension of disbelief that viewers have when they sit down in theaters.
As each outlandish moment reveals itself, there is a unique balance of shocking disbelief and surprising humor that elevates this indie flick above other similar antithetical romantic comedies.
While it might not seem unique to have Carey run away as soon as divorce is put on the table, the extended sequence that becomes the film's opening credits has a quirky vibrancy to it that truly sets the tone for what is to come over the next 90 minutes.
What's truly lacking about “Splitsville,” perhaps mostly due to its two male co-writers, is that its leading ladies are so thinly written in supporting roles that there's almost an amateurish nature to their turns.
Johnson does come across as mildly sympathic as Julie, a woman whose loneliness from the emotional distance Paul keeps her at forces her to cross boundaries with other men, though the screenwriters are far more focused on pushing the comedic envelope than giving Julie’s internal conflict true weight in the same ways that Johnson’s far better work with similar characters in films like “Cha Cha Real Smooth” and “Materialists” did.
Arjona disappears for major sections of “Splitsville” to return as a shoddily conceived riff on Kim Cattrall’s promiscuous Samantha on “Sex and the City,” whose character motivations change wildly in the final third of the film seemingly on a whim.
Yet despite the frustratingly shallow take on modern romance, “Splitsville” does earn most of its highly outrageous comedic bits, leaning heavily on Marvin’s nice guy persona and properly leveraging the good will he’s established early in the film to maintain balance when the screenplay starts to go over the rails.
Michael Angelo Covino does a far better job behind the director’s chair than with his loathsome Paul, with his ability to make uniquely inventive and rich cinematic decisions when shooting dialogue a welcome surprise for independent level comedies.
“Splitsville” is a strangely perfect double feature pairing with the thematically identical remake, “The Roses,” which also mines the world of impending divorce in a more linear manner. Cinephiles who prefer more eccentric, uncomfortable comedy should make an effort to seek out this truly original take on marriage and relationships in theaters before its inevitable early exit from cinemas.
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