REEL | Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona Divorce 'Splitsville'

"You're very flexible with the physical."

Neon / Elevation Pictures

Frequent collaborators and real-life best friends, director Michael Angelo Covino and co-writer Kyle Marvin reteam for their latest side-splitting, absurdist screwball comedy, Splitsville, about two unhealthy but severely intertwined married couples who experiment with opening their marriages. After their riotously hilarious but underrated indie comedy The Climb, this is another uproarious comedic experience.

Once again filmed in extended, unbroken long-takes divided into chaptered sequences, we are dropped into various dramatic situations involving the duo's wives, played wondrously by Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, who are both so comically out of their leagues that it's frequently remarked upon by all the characters. It's impressive how much we learn about these couples' lives, relationships, conflicts, and desires in a short amount of time.

Surrounding them in the different chapters (named after formal divorce proceedings), there's a fine lineup of supporting players who weave in and out of the film depending on the time jumps in between. From Nicholas Braun's highly comical mentalist to Charlie Gillespie's earnest bro-type, Covino and Marvin build a richly hysterical world where these characters fully exist with interior lives outside of the scenes we see.

Splitsville is one of the laugh-out-loud funniest, pure mainstream comedies in years. Everyone's chemistry, particularly the four leads, is exceptional and only enhanced by Covino's ambitious eye for framing, filming, and choreographing the physical comedy sequences. All of them are game to express an entirely crowd-pleasing effort about how deeply flawed all romantic relationships are. It's such an economical and effective delivery system for its unabashed comedy that doubles as pure chaos.


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