Directed by Michael Angelo Covino | Written by Covino and Kyle Marvin | 104 min | ▲▲▲

Here’s a screwball comedy about two wealthy couples that’s raunchy, funny, and occasionally astute about relationships, but one that leans into physical comedy rather than trusting the situations to carry the laughs — it works against the very thing that makes it good. It’s a frustrating flaw because otherwise there’s a lot to like about it.

Carey (Marvin) and Ashley (Adria Arjona) are married. Paul (Covino) and Julie (Dakota Johnson) are married. Carey and Paul are best friends.

Ashely drops a bomb on Carey — though they’ve only been married for about a year, Ashley wants a divorce. She’s been cheating on him with more than one lover. Carey is devastated, seeking solace with his pals Paul and Julie in their gorgeous modernist cottage. Paul and Julie reveal they’re in an open marriage. When Paul goes off to work in the city, Julie tells Carey she thinks he’s screwing someone there when he pretends to work. Subsequently, Julie and Carey have sex.

At breakfast the next morning, when Paul is back. Carey is up front about the activities of the night before. Paul attacks Carey — prompting a 15-minute mondo-destructo battle, smashing up much of this beautiful home.

It’s easy to appreciate how this ridiculously long fight could be hilarious — consider the giddy alleyway dust-up in They Live — but the longer it goes on, the more unlikely it becomes, minimizing what this issue is actually about. It’s like Covino and Martin (creators of The Climb), who are both the male leads and the screenwriters, don’t have enough confidence in the humour inherent in their fundamental storytelling focus: the attraction between men and women in couples, and how sex can really complicate things. So they overplay their hand with a lot of regrettable silliness — the plotting keeps introducing more outrageous stuff that simply would never happen, which distracts from what’s already working.

For example, Carey, despite having had sex with Julie, is keen to get his wife back. He goes back to their shared house to find Ashley in bed with a new, much younger, hunky dude. Carey suggests rather than breaking up they should try to be totally open. He’ll sleep on the couch while she runs through a series of new men. He makes friends with them and invites them to hang out, which Ashley starts to find really irritating.

Yup, this is funny, but it’s also stupid and would never happen in real life. It undermines the seriousness of the themes the film is trying to explore. There’s also an ongoing subplot about Paul and Julie’s deeply troubled and misbehaving kid, Russ (Simon Webster), which is weirdly heartbreaking and feels like it’s part of some other movie.

Even so, this is a movie that’s worth watching for what it’s trying to do rather than what it succeeds at. The women come out a lot more sympathetic than the men do, while Kyle Marvin clearly enjoys hanging out with his wang out. Splitsville is probably a lot more conservative about open relationships than is fair — given it doesn’t show one that works at all — but it doesn’t demonize its participants.

There’s no real antagonist here, we’ve just got four people who are trying to figure out their shit, and spending the better part of two hours with them is no hardship.