Farce Isn’t Dead. It Just Moved to 'Splitsville'

Mike Moody-Garcia

03 Sep 2025 — 3 min read

The funniest comedy in theaters right now isn’t a raunchy studio flick with Liam Neeson trading barbs with Pamela Anderson between dick and fart jokes. It’s a small, largely unseen indie farce co-created by two relative unknowns in collaboration with one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

This is your cue to seek out Splitsville, the new feature from director/co-star Michael Angelo Covino and co-writer/co-star Kyle Marvin. If their names sound vaguely familiar, it’s probably because of their 2019 film The Climb, a micro-budget critical darling that explored male friendship with authenticity, absurdity, and visual bravado.

With Splitsville, Covino and Marvin build on the same foundation; messy relationships, witty dialogue, long takes. But this time they’ve scaled up. The budget is bigger. The scope is wider. And the cast? The ensemble includes superstar Dakota Johnson, who not only stars but also produces.

Johnson is fantastic here. She's dry, wry, and utterly dialed in to the film’s lightly absurd and sardonic tone. She’s matched by Adria Arjona, rounding out an ensemble that knows exactly how to play Splitsville escalating absurdity.

What makes Splitsville more than just a solid indie rom-com is that it’s not really a rom-com at all. It’s a farce. A full-blown, unapologetic, screwball farce with modern relationship issues thrown into a blender of physical comedy, long takes, and emotional dysfunction. Think Divorce Italian Style filtered through the lens of contemporary polyamory and modern insecurities.

The plot? Marvin’s character learns his wife (played by Arjona) wants an open marriage or a divorce. His reaction spirals into a series of catastrophically bad decisions. Meanwhile, Covino and Johnson’s relationship is also on the rocks, and as the two couples’ lives entangle, the emotional chaos becomes physical, messy, and pretty fucking hilarous.

The film leans into its farcical energy without flinching. There’s a 10-minute single-take fight scene that outpaces most recent Marvel movies in inventiveness and tension, while still being laugh-out-loud funny. It’s so good it almost shouldn’t exist in a film this small. But that’s Splitsville in micro: a little movie doing big, wild, unexpected things.

Covino’s camera isn’t always going for visual flair, though when it does, it works. The direction is expressive, grounded in the characters’ spiraling emotional states. The film feels unhinged at times, but rarely sloppy. It’s a carefully orchestrated descent into nervous romantic chaos.

And it’s funny. The kind of funny that’s rare in theaters now: smart, character-driven, and surprising. As funny as Friendship, the other recent comedy that actually made me laugh out loud. these two are currently tied for the funniest film of the year.

If you’ve seen any marketing at all, Splitsville was likely pitched as a romantic comedy. Don’t be fooled. While there is romance, this is a zany comedy of errors in the classic sense. People lie, cheat, rationalize, and self-sabotage in ridiculous ways, all while clinging to the illusion that they’re making progress.

The performances ground it all. Covino and Marvin take a minute to grow on you, but once they do, their awkward, outsider energy becomes part of the film’s charm. Johnson's signature deadpan aloofness is perfectly calibrated to this role, especially when sparring with the over-eager chaos of her co-stars. Arjona, meanwhile, is full of charming chaotic energy; constantly trying to manifest her way to emotional clarity through life coach clichés and dumb Malcolm Gladwell quotes. She's hilarious and completely unpredictable.

Ultimately, Splitsville is about people unmoored; they’re hostages to their emotions, paddling toward something resembling happiness but constantly capsized by their own worst instincts. It’s messy, absurd, and funny. It’s also one of the best comedies of the year.