Splitsville | Film Review

Written By Ian Maisel

Released August 29, 2025

Dakota Johnson Shines in the Year’s Wildest Date Movie

Every once in a while, you walk out of a theater buzzing. Splitsville, starring Dakota Johnson, is one of those unexpected gems. It is a left-of-center date movie about two couples tangled up in infidelity, grief, and the strange, funny mess of human connection.

The film nails a tricky balance: sweet, bruised human drama laced with whimsy and madcap energy. From the very first sing-along joyride that ends in a tragic car crash, it’s clear director Michael Angelo Covino, who co-wrote with Kyle Marvin, is not interested in playing it safe. The film crackles like a live wire, sparking unpredictable plot twists from moment to moment.

One pairing is Carey, played by Kyle Marvin, a sensitive nice guy whose relationship with the self-involved podcaster Ashley (Adria Arjona) combusts in spectacular fashion. The other is Paul and Julie, played by Covino and Johnson, an urbane couple loudly proclaiming their open relationship while clinging jealously to old rules. Johnson slips into the middle, delivering one of her sharpest and most effortlessly charming performances.

The screenplay spins like a colorful top and you never know where it's going to tip. The tension finally erupts in a brawl between Carey and Paul, a spinning, escalating comedy of apologies, slaps, and MMA moves that feels like Jackie Chan wandered into Marriage Story. A later scene has Carey riding a roller coaster holding plastic bags of goldfish in an empty row behind Julie cuddling with a guy she just picked up and their two kids.

By the end, the tangled web of affairs, jealousies, and bad decisions somehow resolves into something strangely sweet. Splitsville is proof that date movies don’t have to be formulaic. They can be messy, jagged, joyful, and deeply human.

Ian Maisel

When I was in high school I worked as a movie theater projectionist, acted in my school plays, and published a series of autobiographical comic books that I sold at music and bookstores. I’ve always loved entertainment, and at Brown University I double majored in Visual Arts and Modern European History because the history teachers told the best stories.

My career began at an artificial intelligence startup company where I worked as a graphic designer and animator creating 3D avatars for virtual personalities. I used a program called Poser that was kind of like a Barbie Dream House for cartoons. My comic illustrations were published in the international edition of Time magazine.

In 2006, I completed a graduate Certificate of Publishing and Communications at Harvard University, where I studied creative writing, acting, and media production. I auditioned for the student theater and was cast in a high-brow Chekhov play and a low-brow undergraduate comedy where I played a California high school guitarist like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

At Boston College I continued developing my career as a graphic designer and went on to work as an animator at a Jewish nonprofit. In 2008 I left Boston to chase the California dream. I got a job in San Francisco as a litigation graphics specialist for intellectual property attorneys, and I worked on some high-stakes legal trials where I barely slept for a week!

After five years I transitioned into the corporate world and worked as a contract presentation designer at Visa and Bare Minerals. I enjoyed collaborating with senior executives to bring their ideas to life through graphic storytelling and large-scale event presentations. One of my highlights was getting to opportunity to produce an in-house interview with the supermodel Christy Turlington!

In 2017 I took on my first Senior Designer role at Alexandria Real Estate, where I designed high-end investor presentations and art directed photoshoots for major tech companies including Facebook, Google, and Pinterest. The following year I flew out to LA to study video production, and went on to create a digital signage content management system for Alexandria’s 60+ high-tech office buildings across the country.

In 2020 I expanded my focus into social media by producing a video advertising campaign that launched a Visa executive’s speaking career by generating 30,000 social media engagements in five months. Since then I’ve continued designing creative presentations, producing videos, and writing social media campaigns for a wide range of brands including the University of San Francisco and Meta. I love working with high-performance creative teams on exciting projects and enjoy utilizing my creative background to work at the intersection of design, entertainment, and culture.

https://www.ianmaisel.com
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