This is why you write! I remember Jon Favreau making Chef, and smartly casting Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Vergara as his paramours. Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Martin must have been inspired by that film too, writing Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona as their better halves. The beautiful, talented women help the boys’ Splitsville actually be a pretty good date night movie, despite the forewarning title. Covino and Martin smartly give the great actresses more to do than ScarJo and Sofia, there to just eat Jon’s cuban sandwiches.
After a near death car crash, Ashley (Adria Arjona) has a moment of clarity. She wants to divorce her husband Carey (Kyle Marvin) and sew some wild oats. Blindsided, Carey sprints to his best friend Paul’s (Michael Angelo Covino) house, where he learns that Paul and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson) have opened their marriage up to sleep around if they desire. And the affectionate Dakota seems to really like how sweet Carey is while on a break from his marriage…
Despite the acting pedigree, this is not some dark study of the human condition. Splitsville is actually one of the funnier films of 2025, because of how smartly Covino and Marvin write out the quad. Each character is wholly unique to the other three, which means the humor changes depending on who’s in the scene. I particularly enjoy the Carey/Ashley dynamic, with the free spirit Ashley getting more annoyed with the passive aggressive manchild Carey, happily collecting her ex’s as his friends to piss her off. Paul and Carey are mostly in a Three Stooges movie, quickly going to horrifically uninspiring fisticuffs with one another. Paul and Julie are in the dark comedy, sniping at each other because they clearly can’t communicate well. The opposite of Carey and Julie, in some sort of sweet adorable romcom. And when everyone’s in a scene together, genres and worlds collide, in funny messy results, like Paul/Julie’s son Rus’s (Simon Webster) birthday party.
Amidst all that emotional chaos I was hoping Splitsville would land at some deep conclusions about modern romance. I mean, though specificity we find universality right? Well in this case, the only universality we find is actually relationships are specific to the people in them. There’s no higher learning or deeper truths, that’s it. So when the movie tries to be serious here and there, Splitsville starts to lag, because that’s not really part of this specific foursome’s day to day living. All 4 leads don’t know that though; they really try to elevate this thing into loftier movie lands. In particular Kyle Martin and Adria Arjona, ready early and often to humiliate themselves to make the joke just 10% funnier.
Breaking up has never been so funny, except maybe Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Splitsville isn’t in that classic’s league, but it happily is better than most of the late summer garbage studios dump before Oscar season. Also, let’s keep writing Adria Arjona into everything please? At this point I’m convinced she can play almost anything, so let’s keep testing that theory, since you know, she’s also the most beautiful person on the planet. Oops, might’ve revealed my cards too early on this one, sorry.