Splitsville Debuts on VOD with a Chaotic Open-Marriage Farce

Splitsville is available now on major VOD platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, marking its streaming debut after a career-trajectory that has leaned into offbeat romantic comedies. The film is directed by Michael Angelo Covino and co-written with Kyle Marvin, who also star in the movie. Covino and Marvin previously built a reputation with The Climb, a buddy comedy that blended humor with raw, road-tested sincerity. Splitsville continues that collaboration by placing a screen-wide open-marriage premise at the center of a relentlessly chaotic, but technically precise, farce that aims to mix ambitious physical comedy with a practical studying of relationships in flux. Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona anchor the cast, delivering performances that balance grounded emotional beats with the film’s relentless, breakneck energy.

Carey, a gym teacher, and Ashley, a life coach, are newly married when Ashley reveals that she has been seeing other people. To avoid conventional heartbreak, their friends Paul (Covino) and Julie (Johnson) propose an open-marriage arrangement with conditions — a setup that lets the group chase desire while dodging traditional jealousy. The movie then careens through a sequence of escalating, boundary-pushing scenarios that emphasize how little control any of them actually have over their impulses. One early scene in which Ashley and Carey navigate a high-stakes personal moment in a moving car leads to a collision between the couple’s private life and a public crisis, underscoring the film’s willingness to jump from the intimate to the absurd in a single breath. From there, the story becomes a long, comic storm of near-disasters — confrontations at a beach house, frantic chases, and a cascade of misunderstandings that keeps careening toward the next punchline.

The centerpiece is a prolonged, nearly unbroken 'Big Fight' sequence that unfolds with the intensity of a choreographed action scene yet stays rooted in the characters’ fragile relationships. The fight sprawls through bedrooms, kitchens and stairs, with furniture crashing and tempers flaring as the trio and their circle of acquaintances collide over desire, loyalty and what it means to commit. The action is augmented by Covino and Marvin’s preference for long takes and sharply controlled blocking, a technique that heightens the sense that these people are moving through life in a continuous, reckless sprint. The result is a film that feels like a carnival ride through a household where boundaries keep shifting — funny, frantic and occasionally a little painful to watch.

Carey’s arc tracks a cross-country search for stability in a world that refuses to settle down; Ashley tests flexibility and resilience; Paul and Julie reveal the appeal and peril of a relationship model that rejects standard monogamy. The film leans into the inherent contradictions of its characters, using the farce as a lens to examine what people want, what they can endure, and whether open arrangements really solve the problems they create.

The performances keep the premise from spiraling into obtuseness. Johnson, who also plays Julie, grounds the proceedings with a cool, unsentimental presence that helps tether the crazier comic devices; Arjona supplies a high-energy counterpoint that drives some of the film’s most delirious scenes. The supporting cast, including a child performance by Simon Webster as Rus and a cluster of friends and coworkers, adds to the sense that these people are juggling real lives with a stageful of pratfalls. The film’s formal trick — repeated chapter headings marking time jumps — gives the impression of watching modular vignettes stitched into a single, breathless road trip. The result is a dynamic, sometimes chaotic, but consistently engrossing experience that lands most of its jokes and visual set-pieces with evident craft.

Critical reception from early reviews has highlighted Splitsville’s deliberate messiness as a feature, not a flaw. The film’s core premise may provoke questions about relationships and fidelity, but its intent is clearly to entertain through kinetic humor, unexpected situations and the thrill of the next gag. The tone remains playful rather than biting, with laughs that arise from character misfires, awkward honesty and the physical comedy of a story in which people are perpetually off-balance. In short, Splitsville aims to be a high-spirited, irreverent celebration of love in all its messy forms, delivered with a confident technical polish that mirrors the characters’ own attempt to navigate chaos.

Splitsville arrives as a streaming title, expanding Covino and Marvin’s creative universe for viewers who prefer streaming-first access. The film is a reminder that culture and entertainment can find humor in imperfect relationships and imperfect people, even when the humor leans into the grotesque or the outrageous. As a showcase for Johnson and Arjona and a demonstration of a filmmaker duo willing to push structure and boundaries, Splitsville offers a committed, if polarizing, night of cinema that will likely spark conversations about what constitutes romance, commitment and comedy in the modern era.