Is This Thing On?
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes
Stars: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day
Writers: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell
Director: Bradley Cooper
Alex is at a crossroads: His marriage is unraveling, he’s had to move into a sparse crash pad, he’s stuck in an office job so stifling he never even mentions just what he does for a living. His eyes are those of the living dead: searching for an undefined refuge of contentment that he knows, deep in his hollowed-out heart, will never appear.
One night, Alex stops into a bar. All he wants is a drink, but there’s a stiff cover charge because the bar is also a comedy club. Comedians, however, get to drink free.
Sign me up, says Alex, who has never even stood in a spotlight.
And his life changes forever.
Is This Thing On?, a dramatic comedy from co-writer/director Bradley Cooper, seethes with middle-age discontent, microscopically examining a life stage where, too often, the soaring dreams of youth seem to have run out of jet fuel. But he populates that bleak landscape with characters so appealing, so worthy of encouragement, that there’s never any doubt Cooper will bless them all with a soft landing.
Will Arnett, who most of us know primarily as the goofball Gob Bluth on TV’s Arrested Development and as the voice of Batman in countless Lego movies, inhabits the character of Alex in Is This Thing On?, a meditation on the dreams that fail us (like storybook relationships) and the ones that seem to step out of the shadows, grab us by the collar, and refuse to let go until we cry uncle.
Arnett co-wrote the script with Cooper, whose previous films (A Star is Born and Maestro) explore the more corrosive sides of show biz. Here he flips the script to reveal the restorative nature of the performing arts; how the mere act of making yourself emotionally naked to a room of strangers can be therapeutic not only for the artist, but also for everyone in their orbit.
Besides Alex, the people with the largest stakes in his midlife transformation are his estranged wife, Tess, played with increasing exasperation by Laura Dern, and their two young sons. The split is amicable in that movie sort of way: The two have seamlessly structured a sleepover schedule for the boys; the estranged spouses, while seeing no way forward in their relationship, remain friendly.
One thing Alex has not shared with Tess, however, is his new standup comedy hobby. Multiple nights a week, he mounts a local stage to vent about his frustrations and insecurities, including those involving Tess – who, in one of those only-in-the-movies coincidences, happens to slip into that same club on a date with her sort-of boyfriend (played with disarming charm by none other than Peyton Manning).
Several years ago, in the U.S. version of the Japanese comedic drama Shall We Dance, Susan Sarandon played the wife of a man (Richard Gere) who’s secretly taking dance lessons. Getting wind of his hobby, she ducks into hubby’s dance recital. Instead of showing Gere on the dance floor, though, director Peter Chelsom chooses to simply focus on the face of Sarandon, who, in a single take, registers a succession of anger, surprise, wonder, and finally overwhelming affection. At the time, I wrote that in this modest, minor film, Sarandon had accomplished one of the great acting moments in movie history.
I was reminded of that scene here when Tess, sitting out of Alex’s sight, essentially eavesdrops on her husband’s latest therapy session. When he tells the audience he’d recently slept with a woman who he was not married to for the first time in 20 years, it hits Tess like a gut punch – but she is utterly unprepared for the follow-up line: “It made me miss my wife.” Almost subliminally, the muscles in Dern’s evocative face loosen. Forgotten affection extinguishes the fire in her eyes. It’s not necessarily that she’s falling in love with Alex again, but at the least she’s remembering why she loved him in the first place.
Is This Thing On?, a film that speaks in closeups the way John Ford spoke in vast Western landscapes, offers multiple moments like that. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream) is a master of the landscape of the human face, and happily, Cooper has assembled a cast more than happy to get up-close-and-personal with the camera: Those gamely playing the couple’s ever-supportive friends and fellow comics include Sean Hayes, Christine Ebersole, Amy Sedaris, Chloe Radcliffe, and Oscar nominee Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday). Cooper himself turns up in a comically poignant role as Balls, the friend who is trying to navigate middle age with a decidedly 20-something disregard for the realities of aging.
Earning honest laughs and well-deserved tears, Is This Thing On? wraps up with a simple yet profound truth: Life is a funny thing.
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