Film Review: SPLITSVILLE (2025): A Bizarre and Hilarious Comedy That Doesn’t Let Up

Splitsville Review

Splitsville (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Michael Angelo Covino, written by Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino and starring Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Kyle Marvin, Michael Angelo Covino, Simon Webster, Charlie Gillespie, David Castaneda, O-T Fagbenle, Nahema Ricci, Tyrone Benskin, Nicholas Braun, Robin Guillen, Letitia Brookes and Tyler Hall.

A movie like Splitsville comes along every ten or fifteen years. It’s a film so funny that it could make you spit your soda out while you’re drinking or accidentally find your popcorn hard to swallow because you’re busy laughing so hard. Credit must be given where credit is due to co-writer, director and co-star, Michael Angelo Covino. I wasn’t aware, for whatever reason, he directed the film while watching it, but now it’s clear that he wrote himself the film’s most juicy role and rightfully so. Though the other parts in the movie played by Adria Arjona, Kyle Marvin and Dakota Johnson are smart and pretty showy roles, Covino is the true stand-out in a cast full of talent.

This film opens with a couple in a moving vehicle together- Ashley (Arjona) and Carey (Marvin). Ashley seems a bit wild, but when she goes to give Carey a taste of sexual pleasure, their car swerves and an accident occurs on the road. Things get more complicated when Ashley wants to separate from Carey after recognizing that marrying him is simply not what she wants to do with her life. A hurt Carey gets out of the car and runs through various obstacles to their original destination where Paul (Covino) and his wife, Julie (Johnson) welcome Carey in. Paul checks carry for ticks in the shower in an odd, but intriguing part of the movie as Julie also joins the pair in the bathroom.

It turns out that Paul is not faithful to Julie because the married couple is seemingly participating in an open relationship. Carey takes a liking to the pretty Julie, and he also has a bond with her and Paul’s young son, Russ (Simon Webster). With his newfound separation from Ashley, who has stated she has not been faithful to him, Carey ends up beginning an affair with Julie behind Paul’s back as Paul gets in trouble with the law over monetary problems that involve him doing some crooked financial activity.

This movie has a wild and crazy series of plot developments that make it intriguing to watch right from the word “go.” One of the craziest scenes involves Russ’s school principal, Dr. Ott (Tyrone Benskin) who has pictures of Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his wall with a portrait of himself sandwiched between them. Dr. Ott plays the role straight, but it is so hilariously funny to see someone so full of himself that laughs could certainly come from the stuffiness that Dr. Ott, as a character, projects.

One of the biggest strengths of the movie is Adria Arjona’s go-for-broke turn as the energetic and carefree Ashley who has a mind reader friend of hers, Matt (Nicholas Braun), come to Russ’s birthday party where Matt confesses the reason he may have had a vasectomy. It was a “latex allergy,” but there’s more hilarity that ensues with Matt as well.

Truth be told, though, this is truly Covino’s film in every way. Paul loses Julie as he ends up in jail and a humorous part has Carey visiting Paul where he sits on a bed as he had been hoping for a conjugal visit from ex, Julie, who he loves wholeheartedly. Covino is raw and vulnerable in his role and has a great time projecting passion into the role he plays. It’s hard to always root for him because he’s something of a loser, in a couple of respects, but we grow to like him thanks to the way the script plays out. Arjona hilariously has a scene where she and Covino each strip down to have sex with one another, but they wind up putting their clothes back on as they come up with reasons not to have sex.

Splitsville is a hysterical comic ride. It’s absurd at times as the jokes and dialogue keep running off like wild cards that surprisingly hit more than they miss. I enjoyed the dynamics of the characterizations and found the fact that Johnson may have the least showy role here the most intriguing part of the ensemble. Johnson is quietly effective and expresses a wide range of emotions while Covino and Arjona go over-the-top at times and the entertaining Marvin’s character occasionally reveals his penis on-screen at given intervals. Johnson is the most restrained one here, but that doesn’t take away the least from the quality of her performance in the film.

If Covino pushes too many buttons here, chalk it up to the fact that he wears too many hats on this project. Splitsville is still a side-“splittingly” funny movie about the power of love and how it can make us do crazy things. It’s also about finding oneself in life at middle-age and learning to decipher who is the appropriate one to wind up staying with romantically when all the dust clears. Covino may have bitten off more than he could chew here, but he doesn’t spit anything out and keeps the material feeling all the more authentic as a result despite the occasional absurdity that arises. This is certainly a fine late summer movie find.

Rating: 8/10

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