‘Is This Thing On?’ Is Exactly the Kind of Movie We Need More Of

A man walks into a bar. His name is Alex Novak, and he’s not doing so hot. He’s got some sort of job in finance, though we never see him at work. His personal life, however, is a mess. His wife, Tess, greets him in the bathroom before bed with “We need to call it, right?” — as in their marriage. Alex has just moved into his own place in downtown Manhattan, complete with sad-dad minimalist decor. His two sons, both around 10 years old (“Irish twins”), tell him he needs goals. Earlier in the evening, at a dinner party with their old friends, Tess launches into a story about a person experiencing joy and sorrow. Alex asks if she’s talking about him. “No,” she reflexively answers, “someone alive.”

Anyway, back to the part about the bar. Alex wants a drink. Maybe needs is a better verb here. Except the guy at the door tells him there’s a $20 cover. It’s an open-mic night for stand-ups; if Alex wants to go up onstage, however, he can get in for free. Alex has never done comedy before, but to reiterate: He needs a drink. So he puts his name down on the list. When they call his name, Alex ambles up to the microphone and faces the crowd. “I don’t have a ton of jokes,” he says. “I think I’m getting a divorce….”

This is the Big Bang Moment of actor-director Bradly Cooper’s Is This Thing On?, the catalytic event that will help this middle-aged gentleman get his groove back. Given that Alex is played by Will Arnett, an actor who can spin smarm on a line like a major-league pitcher using the Magnus effect, you expect that Alex will discover he’s actually a comic genius, just waiting to be activated. He’ll then ascend the ranks of New York’s stand-up scene, and quickly find both success and a second chance at life. You instinctively brace in for the sort of self-actualization tale that used to litter studio lineups by the dozens and usually came with awards campaigns. You reluctantly settle for Punchline 2.0.

Which is partially why this based-on-a-true-story dramedy hits you so hard, by letting you lean into the premise before making a sharp left turn into much more complicated, far more fertile territory. Yes, Alex does begin to frequent the Comedy Cellar more, bonding with his fellow working comics (played by IRL stand-ups Chloe Radcliffe, Jordan Jensen and Reggie Conquest). Yes, he does begin to slowly yet surely put himself back together due to the healing power of making strangers laugh for a two-drink minimum. Yes, he will find a new purpose so late in his life, putting in the hours to craft a tight 10. And yes, Tess (Laura Dern; more on her in a second) will notice a difference in this man who seemed to have had his life spark snuffed out.
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But it’s both the way that Cooper and Arnett play this arc and the movie’s switch-up from middle-aged male malaise to a story about marriages — how they’re kept alive or wither on the vine, how they require personal replenishment and collective renewal, how people can become so caught up in the idea of their partner that they fail to see who they actually are — that turn this film into something far more unique. The gentleman behind the extraordinary, Gaga-centric 2018 version of A Star Is Born has already proven he’s got chops behind the camera, and if his follow-up Maestro occasionally hit its head on the biopic ceiling, there are a handful of sequences that suggest Cooper intuitively understands the connection between form and character-driven content. (We stan a good Thanksgiving-day parade argument scene.)

With this narrative of unlikely reinvention and conscious uncouplings, Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique opt to keep it ragged, filming run-and-gun sequences on the streets of New York’s West Village and snaking the cameras inside the crowded hallways and clustered audiences of the actual Comedy Cellar. Numerous exchanges between Alex and Tess, Alex and his kids, the couple and their various friends — notably Andra Day‘s self-proclaimed bullshit foghorn and a holy fool named Balls, played by Cooper, who gifts himself the movie’s best entrance — unfold without a score guiding you toward an easy or lazy emotional cue, all the better for the actors to do their work. No opportunity for a close-up is left behind, yet Cooper uses these literally in-your-face compositions to the film’s advantage. Once Arnett enters the club for the first time, we constantly see him in partial profile or half-lit; it isn’t until he gets onstage that we get to see his expression of bewilderment and unexpected bliss in full.

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And when you have a powerhouse like Laura Dern, who gives you an entire emotional journey in miniature when Tess accidentally stumbles across her ex-husband’s new preoccupation during a date, why wouldn’t you frame her in an intimate, near-claustrophobic close-up? She and Arnett navigate the rocky waters of these people caught up in a marital dissolution without an easy solution or starting point — the movie drops you into their situation mid–car-wreck — in a way that suggests whole histories of deep love, disappointment and miscommunication. To see Dern go from a negotiator of divorces in the Oscar-winning Marriage Story (2019) to someone caught in the vortex of confusion and liberation makes for a great point-counterpoint argument, but her way of showing you that Tess isn’t a straw woman responsible for Alex’s initial self-pity party is more than just giving her costar something to play against. It’s Exhibit A of what a great actor can do with a great role in a movie made by adults, for adults.

Yet Is This Thing On? knows that it needs to get its resident lost soul into a redemption arc that feels earned before suggesting a reunion of sorts, and that’s where Arnett gets the chance to flex. His usual comfort zone of arrogant, inept blowhards has given us a rogue’s gallery of unforgettable screen idiots, and he’s so associated with a certain comic persona that you may forget how he gave heart and soul to an animated celebrity horse. Bojack Horseman made incredible use of both Arnett’s two-packs-a-day baritone and his frat-bro–friendly bluster, yet there was always a genuine sense of wounded pathos that gilded his readings. It’s a key to understanding what he’s tapping into here.
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Alex is neither an excuse for Arnett to crack jokes at will nor part of a tradition of funny people bending themselves into Bikram Yoga positions to be taken seriously. It’s merely a portrait of a guy trying to find his way back, one confessional free-form monologue at a time, to who he is after being adrift in a sea of existential ennui. Arnett understands this, possibly better than we might know. Regardless, the role brings out a side of him that feels revelatory. And with the exception of a few conspicuous nudges toward uplift, notably the use of kids covering a recognizable classic rock tune, Is This Thing On? honors that in a way that stays true to what he’s doing up there, on both fictional stages and onscreen. It respects both its everyman’s unexpected rejuvenation and the audience watching it happen. We could use a lot more movies like this right now.