Splitsville

Honestly, I can’t even do a Recxpectations for Splitsville. It’s probably second to “The Life of Chuck” on this year’s Movies I Didn’t Get list. It’s basically a screwball comedy except, for me, the response to the humor was more of thinking, “Oh, that’s kind of funny” than actual laughing.

I’m not a fan of the White Lotus-style “Let’s laugh at shitty people be shitty” brand of comedy. There is almost NOTHING romantic about “Splitsville” and it’s more a screwball comedy than rom-com. What really threw me off is that the trailer kind of made it seem like a guy stumbled into a random house and then was seduced a bit by the wife but, in the film, the two male leads are best friends. For me, that completely changes the mathematics - the lead isn’t sleeping with someone’s wife, he’s sleeping with his best friend’s wife with whom his best friend has a kid, which adds another level of WTFery to the proceedings.

The film is extremely well made and isn’t without its charms but it almost felt like they were speed running through three or four different film ideas in 100 minutes. It appears that a lot of critics like that style of storytelling but I find that it falls flat because it rarely takes time to establish and foundation or core to hold onto. In that way, it’s a bit like The Roses, but if I had to compare it to a film, it’s almost like a film that is making fun of Dakota Johnson’s previous movie, The Materialists.

All of that being said, I still enjoyed the film more than most this year but that seems to say more about this year in film than the movie itself. Or maybe it says more about me. Maybe cinema is heading down the rap path as something I once loved is now completely foreign to me and I have no interest in figuring out how to connect with it. I hope not. But I’ve definitely found myself being more of a hater this year. Hopefully, things will turn around this fall. I’m seeing 6 movies over 9 days to kick off September; let’s hope there’s something that lands with me.