Film Review | Laughing Matters, Crying Matters

What’s in the name? Plenty, in the case of the new film directed by Bradley Cooper, Is This Thing On? — another loaded, archetypal question. Of course, the phrase is there as a reflexive punchline arriving after the failed punchline of a joke or a comedy routine, but it takes on a more textured meaning here. The questionable twin “things” in the spotlight are a dissolving marriage and an accidental left turn into the world of comedy. It’s a complicated, on and off situation. 

What is clearly “on” in the film are the performances by and interactions between the leads. Will Arnett, in his finest screen work to date, plays the soon to be ex-partner and suddenly comedy club-fixated Alex, the always strong Laura Dern appears as his exasperated freedom-seeking wife Tess, and, flitting around the fringes, Cooper himself shines as a somewhat sleazy wannabe comic actor.

Marriage on the rocks may qualify as a dime-a-dozen storyline. But here’s the twist: Alex, trying to salve his wounds and keep on a brave face in his new bachelor apartment, slips down into the Comedy Cellar and is forced — by fate? — on stage for a five-minute slot. By channeling his personal woes into a droll delivery style, he surprisingly connects with the audience and is fed that dangerously life-enhancing drug: laughter and audience appreciation. He is hooked.

Complications and plot swerves ensue, including the awkward but ultimately renewing confrontation with Tess after she stumbles upon the club and finds herself the subject of public laughter. But hope and old flames beckon, along with the revelatory realization about being unhappy in a marriage, but not with it. A sneaky sorta theme song in the film is the Bowie-Mercury classic “Under Pressure,” as performed by their wise, and wise-tongued, young children.

Cooper co-wrote the script with Mark Chappell, partly based on British comic John Bishop’s life experience, and the director-actor fares well in his handling of the film, with a lighter touch than seen in his big ticket, “look at me” sensations Star is Born and Maestro. In acting garb, he also shows his deft skill playing dubious characters just shy of villainy and delusionary importance — which he also pulled off with his uproarious take as Jon Peters in Licorice Pizza.

But what really makes the film sing as well as it does is Arnett’s loose and complex portrayal of a man in flux, finding relief in the realm of jokes. Stand-up comedy remains a seductive and thriving frontier, maybe more so in an age of canned, AI-infested culture, as robots threaten to rule our reality. That very human, volatile, in the moment nature has sometimes made comedy ripe for cinematic treatments, including King of Comedy, Funny People, Man on the Moon, and the edgy outskirts of Rick Alverson’s The Comedy (starring wildcard anti-comic comic Tim Heidecker).

Is This Thing On? occupies a niche of its own, to its credit. Call it a rom-com if you must — which it is, at least in the broad definition of the genre. It ends up being more of a rom-tragicom, by turns sweet and sour, giddy and weepy, uncertain but hopeful at the core. In that way, the film tackles the tricky but veracious subject of marriage in all of its attendant mood swings. Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story dealt with this landmine-pocked story more assuredly, but Cooper’s impressive venture has its own bittersweet — and yes, funny — charm. 

And it asks the right questions.

Is This Thing On? is currently playing at multiple Metropolitan Theatres. See trailer here.