For anyone experienced in the world of open mic comedy nights, Is This Thing On? – a Bradley Cooper dramedy unexpectedly inspired by the life of UK comedian John Bishop – feels almost chillingly accurate. It’s practically a rite of passage for straight men starting out in stand-up to open their five-minute sets with some variation on, “So, I just got dumped…”
With that in mind, you can imagine a few people in the audience rolling their eyes and muttering, “oh brother”, when financier Alex Novak (Will Arnett) takes to the stage for the first time. Preferring to sign up for a slot at Manhattan’s Comedy Cellar rather than pay the bar’s entry fee, he’s arrived with not a sliver of material to his name, so he defaults to the dissolution of his marriage to Tess (Laura Dern).
“I think I’m getting a divorce,” he begins. “What tipped me off is that I’m living in an apartment on my own. And my wife and kids don’t live there.” It’s not exactly a home run of a joke. But it’s oddly refreshing that the point of Cooper’s film is not that Alex is some generational talent (to clarify, this is not an underhanded jab at Bishop, whose similarity to Alex extends only to the circumstances of how he kickstarted his career).
Instead, the sweet and slightly subdued Is This Thing On? contemplates whether a creative pursuit can lighten the burden of love rather than weigh it down. Cooper, who co-wrote his script with Arnett and Mark Chappell, doesn’t chase the idea as vehemently as you’d hope. It does, though, sit pleasantly in direct contrast to more usual tales of tortured artists in love, including Cooper’s own A Star Is Born (2018), a tragic romance set in the music industry, and Maestro (2023), about Leonard Bernstein’s troubled relationship with Felicia Montealegre.
Alex, as Amy Sedaris’s emcee Kemp observes, has found a “safe space” in comedy and free therapy behind the mic. After all, it’s easier to confess to strangers you’ll never see again than to the people closest in your life. He’s on a path to self-rediscovery, you could say – but so is Tess, who once played volleyball in the Olympics, and post-retirement has lost all sense of propulsion. Neither of them, really, has much sense of who they are beyond the shapeless labels of “wife” and “husband”.
It’s here that Arnett and Dern’s delicate chemistry shines, as they pick apart the tiny contradictions of amicable separation, where affection still punctures whatever emotional iron curtain’s suddenly shot up between them. Cooper’s film works best when it explores these less dramatic dysfunctions, including between the former couple’s friends Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper), who somehow make being endlessly frustrated with each other work.
Cooper’s Balls, an actor submerging himself entirely into an understudy role for Jesus Christ Superstar, gets the lion’s share of outrightly funny lines. Yet, the Hangover star is self-aware and skilled enough never to push the character beyond believability, which is quite the achievement for a man called Balls.
What does, arguably, feel a little inauthentic is the way Cooper so often forces intimacy by pushing the camera so close in on his characters’ faces that, often, they’re having conversations while practically standing nose-to-nose. There’s a final manoeuvre, too, towards grandiose emotion via the deployment of Queen’s epic and sentimental “Under Pressure”.
It’s small in scope and may prove relatively minor in Cooper’s filmography. But, still, the intentions of Is This Thing On? feel worthy. Here’s a filmmaker fully invested in what divides the personal from the creative, and willing to look at it from all angles – even from the dingy basement of a New York City club.
Dir: Bradley Cooper. Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Amy Sedaris. Cert 15, 121 minutes.
‘Is This Thing On?’ is in cinemas from 30 January
