Pārāk iemīlējies sevī, ‘Splitsville’ atpaliek

p]: text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix “>

“Splitsville” lands at a time when every comedy released in theaters feels like a battle cry, an attempt to defend the audience’s right to have a good time at the movies.

Directed by Michael Angelo Covino, who also produces, co-writes, and co-stars with Kyle Marvin, the film continues the duo’s comic run of bad choices, in which men predictably make bad decisions and are portrayed as vain, infantile, and often motivated by their worst impulses. (It’s funny because it’s true.)

As the film begins, Carrie (Marvin) is married to Ashley (Adria Arjona), who tells him she has been seeing other people and wants a divorce. He seeks comfort from his best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife Julia (Dakota Johnson), who tell Carrie that they are in an open relationship. Soon Carrie sleeps with Julia, and all sorts of jealousies and complicated feelings arise between the four of them.

“Splitsville” — the title briefly appears on screen as a neon sign for a dessert stand — is on the surface a satire of bourgeois aspirations, modern marriage, and how no one really understands the dynamics of what happens to other couples. But the film is actually more concerned with the absurdities of male friendship, to the extent that Covino and Marvin are perennially self-absorbed and can’t help but center their antics.

Their previous film, “The Climb,” was also about two friends trapped in an up-and-down relationship that alternates between moments of betrayal and gestures of support. While they don’t play the same specific characters from “The Climb,” they play very much the same kind. Covino is seemingly more polished and put together, albeit fraught with insecurities, while Marvin initially seems unhappy and vulnerable, with an emotional intelligence that reveals him to be more savior than he first appears. So they essentially meet in the middle.

The whole film is disappointingly self-serving, with the expectation that the audience will adore the characters just as much. What at times feels like a coming-of-age interrogation of modern masculinity ends up suffering from the very impulses it seems to want to parody. (We hear several times that one of them is generously endowed.)

Both Arjona and Johnson are asked to play variations on characters they’ve portrayed elsewhere. Arjona has the same earthy warmth she did in “Hit Man,” while Johnson displays a placid air of controlled chaos similar to what she displayed earlier this year in “The Materialists.” They undoubtedly elevate the film, even though too often their characters feel like game pieces manipulated on a board controlled by the film’s male leads.

Johnson and Arjona are movie stars, captivating and captivating. Covino and Marvin seem like a couple of guys who somehow wander the screen. The tension is never resolved and constantly throws the story off balance.

There’s a moment in “The Climb” where Covino and Marvin briefly wrestle—a funny sight of two grown men grappling on the ground. Here, the beat escalates into a full-on fight scene that goes on for over six minutes, as Paul attacks Carrie after finding out he slept with Julie. Crushing furniture, breaking drywall, destroying a fish tank (saving the fish), and somehow separating Carrie’s eyebrows, the fight scene is the centerpiece of the film, one of its main selling points, and a testament to everything that works and doesn’t work for both. It’s funny, hilariously aggravating, but it’s also too out of character for the characters and the story, and it really exists as something that Covino and Marvin just wanted to do for themselves.

They’re good jokes, but much weaker on substance, stumbling when it all adds up to anything. With a backdrop of commercials, Marvin and Covino are strong on short, subtle ideas conveyed through strong visuals. They’re ultimately better served doing work where they don’t appear — their performances are the weakest thing about their films to date. Even if they’re still a promising duo, “Splitsville” never quite comes together.