Carey

“Splitsville” lands at a moment when every comedy released to theaters feels like a battle cry, an attempt to defend audiences’ rights to have a good time at the movies.

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

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

“Splitsville” — the title appears briefly onscreen as the neon sign of a dessert stand — is outwardly a satire of bourgeois aspirations, modern marriage and how no one really understands the dynamics of what goes on with other couples. But the film is actually more concerned with the absurdities of male friendship, to the extent that Covino and Marvin are perennially enamored of themselves and can’t help from centering their own antics.

Their previous movie, “The Climb,” was also about two friends locked into an up-and-down relationship alternating between of moments of betrayal and gestures of support. While they are not playing the same specific characters from “The Climb,” they are very much playing the same type. Covino is seemingly more smooth and together, though riddled with insecurities, while Marvin initially appears hapless and vulnerable, with an emotional intelligence that reveals him to be savvier than he first appears. So they basically meet in the middle.

The entire movie has a disappointing air of smug self-regard about it, with an expectation the audience will adore everything about the characters as much as they do. What at moments feels like a nascent interrogation of contemporary masculinity ultimately suffers from the very impulses it seems to want to parody. (We hear numerous times that one of them is generously endowed.)

Both Arjona and Johnson are asked to play variations on personas they have depicted elsewhere. Arjona has the same earthy warmth she did in “Hit Man,” while Johnson exhibits a placid air of controlled chaos similar to what she showed earlier this year in “Materialists.” They undoubtedly elevate the movie, 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, beguiling and captivating. Covino and Marvin seem like a couple of guys who somehow wandered onscreen. The tension is never reconciled and is constantly throwing the story off balance.

In “The Climb,” there is a moment where Covino and Marvin briefly wrestle, a ludicrous sight of two grown men tussling on the ground. Here that beat expands into a full-blown fight scene that goes on for more than six minutes, as Paul attacks Carey after learning he slept with Julie. Smashing furniture, breaking drywall, destroying a fish tank (while saving the fish) and somehow singeing off Carey’s eyebrows, the fight scene is the movie’s centerpiece, one of its major selling points and indicative of everything that both works and doesn’t. It is funny, escalating ridiculously, but it is also too outlandish for the characters and the story and only really exists as something that Covino and Marvin simply wanted to do for themselves.

They’re good at jokes but much weaker on meaning, stumbling when it comes to making it all add up to something. With a background in advertising, Marvin and Covino are strong on short, punchy ideas conveyed through strong visuals. They may eventually be better served by making work they do not appear in — their performances are the weakest thing about their movies so far. Even as they remain a promising duo, “Splitsville” never quite fully comes together.

Ron Carey, the reformist Teamsters president who was ousted from the union in a fund-raising scandal five years ago, was acquitted Friday of lying to investigators during several corruption probes.

A federal jury in Manhattan found Carey, 65, not guilty of seven counts of perjury. Each count carried a maximum five-year sentence.

“I’m just so delighted,” Carey told reporters outside the courtroom. “It obviously opens lots of doors and possibilities, which I’ll be looking at.”

A former truck driver who ran the 1.4-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters union for five years, Carey narrowly won reelection against James P. Hoffa in 1996. But the vote was invalidated when it was learned that aides laundered nearly $1 million in contributions to Carey’s campaign. Hoffa handily beat Carey in a new election.

Carey, who had pledged to continue efforts to clean up the scandal-plagued union, told investigators at the time that he had no knowledge of the scheme. He said it was orchestrated by professional campaign consultants.

During the trial, Assistant U.S. Atty. Deborah Landis said Carey knew about the plan, did nothing to stop it and then lied about it to numerous federal and union investigators over a six-month period.

The aides contributed $885,000 in Teamsters funds to several political action organizations. In turn, wealthy donors contributed similar amounts to Carey’s campaign. Federal law prohibits the use of union funds to promote the candidacy of any individual.

The union, which was placed under federal trusteeship long before the Carey presidency, still is monitored by the government.

Matt Noyes of the Assn. for Union Democracy, a New York-based civil rights group that has monitored the Teamsters and other corruption-plagued unions, said he was not surprised by the acquittal. The prosecution “seemed a little gratuitous,” he said, because Carey already had been removed from the union and the architects of the scheme had been found guilty and were sentenced.

Teamsters spokesman Bret Caldwell said the acquittal would not change the union’s position toward Carey. “He’s banned from the union and that’s not changing.”

Caldwell also said the union planned to continue pursuing a civil racketeering case against Carey. That effort seeks the return of the $885,000. The case was dismissed by a federal judge two weeks ago, but Caldwell said the union plans to appeal the dismissal as well as file a new, rewritten case. “Ron Carey’s not off the hook yet,” he said.

Friday’s acquittal came as Teamsters members began receiving mail-in ballots for the latest union election. Hoffa is running for reelection against Tom Leedham, who ran as a reformer in Carey’s place during the rematch five years ago. Members have until mid-November to return ballots.

Leedham supporters said the acquittal could help their campaign, because Leedham and Carey espouse similar reforms and pull from the same supporters. “It really undercuts a lot of what Hoffa has said” about Carey, said Ken Paff, national coordinator of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union. “Whatever mistakes Carey made–including allowing unsavory consultants into his campaign–his legacy is one of reform, power and hope for Teamsters.”

But Hoffa campaign spokesman Rich Leebove disputed that. “We don’t think it will have any impact, because Ron Carey’s not on the ballot,” he said. “This is an issue from five years ago, and most people have moved on. This election’s going to be decided on leadership. . . . We feel comfortable. Leedham’s support is less now than it was three years ago.”