Is This Thing On?
Will Arnett and Laura Dern play a couple on the skids in Bradley Cooper’s scrappy and chaotic comedy-drama.
Marriage story: Will Arnett and Laura Dern
Image courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Is This Thing On? comes with an unusual pedigree. It stars the comedian and voice actor Will Arnett, is written and directed by Bradley Cooper and is inspired by the life of the Liverpudlian stand-up comic John Bishop. Is this thing real? As a director, Bradley Cooper has been drawn to protagonists in the performing arts, be it the rock star Jackson Maine in A Star is Born, the conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein in Maestro and now the (fictitious) stand-up comic Alex Novak. In spite of his unshaven, dishevelled appearance, Alex Novak “works in finance” and doesn’t appear to be short of a dollar. Even so, at a critical point in his life, he doesn’t have the $15 required to enter a Manhattan bar and so agrees to take to the stage in order to gain entry. One could hardly accuse Alex of being one of life’s natural raconteurs, but the polite laughter that greets his on-stage anecdotal therapy session lights something in his soul.
As much as Is This Thing On? is about stand-up comedy, it is about marriage and the inertia of certain long-term relationships. Unlike the emotional meltdown that Laura Dern oversaw as Scarlett Johansson’s divorce lawyer in Marriage Story (2019), the abrupt separation that Tess (Laura Dern) and Alex (Arnett) embark on here is a surprisingly civil affair and appears to have little effect on their two ten-year-old sons, Felix and Jude. As with many middle-aged couples, the spark in Tess and Alex’s marriage seems to have imperceptibly seeped away, prompting Alex to take a bachelor pad in Manhattan while Tess looks after the boys at the suburban family home.
At the very beginning of the film, one night Tess faces Alex outside their sons’ bedroom door and whispers the chilling words, “we need to call it.” Without wishing to disturb their sleeping children, Alex agrees on the spot. Even so, they seem to share a comfortable chemistry, and share the same set of friends, as is so often the case in mainstream Hollywood movies. To give the film an indie edge, Cooper shot it all on a claustrophobic 1.66:1 aspect ratio, encouraged his actors to talk over each other and keeps his camera moving to queasy effect. The film is also perversely underlit, making some scenes virtually impossible to make out. Regardless of Cooper’s intent, the style is enormously irritating as it draws attention to itself, as we try to piece together who these self-indulgent, privileged New Yorkers are. At times, it feels as if Cooper has picked up a number of scenes and just hurled them at the wall, to see which might stick, while arbitrarily cutting between them.
The result is that it’s hard to invest in the film’s randomness or, indeed, its characters. And then, at the end, Cooper resorts to his now traditional exit plan, to end with a big musical number. In A Star is Born it was Lady Gaga standing alone on stage singing ‘I'll Never Love Again,’ and in Maestro, it was Bernstein’s magnificent performance of the finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, before a boogie on the dancefloor to Tears for Fear’s ‘Shout’. Here, we have a live rendition of Queen and Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure,’ the context of which it would be unfair to reveal.
Cast: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Scott Icenogle, Chloe Radcliffe, Jordan Jensen, Blake Kane, Calvin Knegten, Matthew Libatique.
Dir Bradley Cooper, Pro Bradley Cooper, Weston Middleton, Will Arnett and Kris Thykier, Ex Pro John Bishop and Caroline Jaczko, Screenplay Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett and Mark Chappell, Ph Matthew Libatique, Pro Des Kevin Thompson, Ed Charlie Greene, Music James Newberry, Costumes Gali Noy.
Lea Pictures/Archery Pictures-Walt Disney Studios.
120 mins. USA. 2025. US Rel: 19 December 2025. UK Rel: 30 January 2026. Cert. 15.
