Splitsville

Marriage seems to yield considerably more hilarity than divorce, so perhaps Splitsville deserves credit for at least trying to subvert genre expectations.

This uneven exercise in absurdist cringe comedy from director Michael Angelo Covino (The Climb) skewers modern masculinity and adults caught between relationships and commitments. Embracing the awkwardness of its characters and circumstances, it’s also overburdened with eccentricities at the expense of meaningful romantic enlightenment or grounded emotional depth.

It opens with one of the funniest scenes you’ll see involving a fatal car accident, which also reflects the edgy approach to romantic comedy that’s one of the film’s primary strengths.

Shortly afterward, Ashley (Adria Arjona) tells Carey (Kyle Marvin) that she wants a divorce, blaming her own infidelity. That sends Carey spiraling, and he winds up in the pristine backyard of his best friend, Paul (Covino), who lives with his wife, Julie (Dakota Johnson), and absurdly precocious young son (Simon Webster).

It turns out Paul and Julie have a happily open relationship, which Carey decides to test when Paul goes out of town on business. Not ready to leave Ashley behind, however, he proposes the same arrangement in his own life, and proceeds to stay in their apartment even as Ashley’s new boyfriends come and go.

Eventually, the discomfort bubbles to the surface, along with petty jealousies and secret motives. Both men tend to disguise their true feelings behind cheesy puns and metaphors before battling it out in some sort of slapstick free-for-all while the women hold the upper hand.

Amid the awkwardness and strained screwball mayhem, their scheme plays out as some sort of middle-aged male fantasy that’s desperate for them but contrived for moviegoers.

The characters are obliviously needy and self-absorbed, of which the screenplay by Covino and Marvin is fully aware. They employ some offbeat narrative geometry in the central love triangle, generating scattered big laughs from an array of deadpan one-liners and clever sight gags — although in the end it’s more silly than substantial.

The film stumbles in providing incentive for emotional investment in who winds up together or apart, or whether anyone ever finds the fulfillment the couples claim to be seeking.

Their company grows tiresome after a while, and as Splitsville digs deeper into the self-inflicted dysfunction, they might be perfect for one another, after all.

Rated R, 104 minutes.