Splitsville – first-look review

The course of true love nev­er did run smooth, and for the kind but clue­less Carey (Kyle Mar­vin) he’s in for a rude awak­en­ing. His wife of 13 months, whom he met at a con­cert for soft-rock croon­ers The Fray, has just announced she wants a divorce. Ash­ley (Adria Arjona) is a free-spir­it­ed life coach, and just can’t see a future with Carey, despite his clear ado­ra­tion of her. He seeks solace from his wealthy friends Paul (Michael Ange­lo Covi­no) and Julie (Dako­ta John­son) who reveal the secret to their own seem­ing­ly har­mo­nious rela­tion­ship: an open mar­riage. Paul and Julie the­o­rise that in remov­ing the shame asso­ci­at­ed with cheat­ing, they give them­selves no rea­son to break up. At first Carey is sur­prised, but he quick­ly comes around to the idea. After all – it seems to be work­ing for Paul and Julie. Right…?!

Mar­vin and Covi­no are real life best friends (who also wrote and starred in 2019’s The Climb togeth­er) so it fig­ures their on-screen chem­istry is nat­ur­al and charm­ing, but the bud­dies quick­ly come to blows when Carey gets him­self mixed up in Paul’s mar­riage, and a ludi­crous fight scene between the two of them in Paul’s archi­tec­tural­ly splen­did lake house is an ear­ly high­light of the film. There’s less chem­istry between the actors and their on-screen wives, despite the fact Arjona and John­son are quite con­vinc­ing come­di­ans. It’s nev­er real­ly clear what these beau­ti­ful, savvy women see in Carey and Paul, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lat­ter, who repeat­ed­ly proves him­self to be at best a lia­bil­i­ty, at worst a psy­chopath – which is shrugged off as endear­ing by his friends and wife, as is the behav­iour of their tear­away child Russ who keeps steal­ing jet skis and get­ting in trou­ble at school.

It’s a high­ly macho sort of roman­tic com­e­dy pos­ing as pro­gres­sive by show­ing two sex­u­al­ly lib­er­at­ed mod­ern women, but we don’t real­ly ever get much insight into their char­ac­ters beyond the fact that their pur­suit of oth­er part­ners stems from a lack of sat­is­fac­tion rather than, y’know, just want­i­ng to live their lives. Despite its sup­posed pro­gres­sive premise about the way mod­ern rela­tion­ships can work, Splitsville is in fact quite tra­di­tion­al by its con­clu­sion, ren­der­ing most of the plot ulti­mate­ly a waste of time. It’s a film not with­out occa­sion­al moments of spark, and flits along quite hap­pi­ly, but Splitsville seems con­tin­u­al­ly intent on under­min­ing itself, and in the process becomes total­ly forgettable.