In the early moments of Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?” Tess (Laura Dern) is brushing her teeth and watching her husband Alex (Will Arnett) as he steps out of the shower.
“We need to call it, right?” Tess asks in between brushes. Alex takes a brief beat before responding “I think so, too.”
The “it” being Alex and Tess’ marriage; after 20 years, the couple has decided to divorce. There doesn’t seem to be any anger or bitterness between the two, it just seems like time has passed them by and it’s starting to drag the two of them in separate directions. They are amicable with each other and even spend time together with their group of friends one last time (Andra Day and Cooper play their married friends Christine and Balls — yes, Cooper’s name is Balls). When the night is over, the couple heads to the train station together, share a pot cookie and Tess goes back to their suburban home while Alex hits the streets of New York City to head back to the apartment he’s renting.
Alex passes a bar and decides to go in for a drink but the bouncer lets him know it’s a $15 cover unless he’s on the roster to perform stand-up. Since Alex doesn’t want to pay the cover, the only logical solution is to perform a stand-up routine, which he has never done before. Is Alex even funny? Can he construct a joke on the fly? He’s about to find out when the light is on him and the microphone is in his hand.
“Is This Thing On?” is Cooper’s third feature as a director. After his magnificent “A Star is Born” adaptation in 2018 and 2023’s impressive “Maestro,” he has taken a much more stripped-down approach to filmmaking. His third feature is much more straightforward and treads in familiar territory. It’s almost like Cooper’s answer to the claims he’s trying too hard to win an Academy Award, because those aspirations aren’t present in his latest.
As far as divorce dramas go, “Is This Thing On?” feels fairly standard issue. The stand-up comedy aspect is an attempt to give the movie its own quirk and separate it from other divorce tales, but the plot floats from scene-to-scene without any real energy or insight. “Is This Thing On?” is the annoying type of film where there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but there’s also no compelling reason to spend over two hours watching.
Arnett certainly gets a chance to flex a different muscle than audiences may be used to from him, and while he and Dern have some lived-in chemistry, their performances aren’t able to liven up a stagnant movie. (Cooper’s supporting character, who wears a large hat and oversized glasses is the closest attempt to liven things up).
Cooper’s status in Hollywood — and his successful first two outings as a director — give him the opportunity to make whatever movie he wants. Given the subject matter of “Is This Thing On?” the movie should feel more personal than it does, like an artist exorcising something from their personal life, but instead this movie plods along and never truly finds the right punchline.
“Is This Thing On” opens Friday, January 9 at The Little Theatre.
