Is This Thing On? (2025)
Directed by: Bradley Cooper
Premise: Alex (Will Arnett) separates from his wife (Laura Dern). As a way of coping with heartbreak, Alex starts doing standup comedy.
What Works: Over the past few decades, standup comedy has become performative public therapy with comics exploiting their traumas and anxieties. Whether that’s been good for the form is debatable but Is This Thing On? uses standup as a way for a divorcee to vocalize his pain. That’s what one-man shows and soliloquies have long done on stage and the filmmakers of Is This Thing On? make it cinematic. Director Bradley Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique shoot much of Is This Thing On? with a handheld camera and use tight shot compositions in which actors’ faces crowd the frame. The style creates an immediacy and intimacy but also allows for fluidity and kineticism. The movie focuses on Alex, a middle-aged man with two children who is overwhelmed with heartbreak and the uncertainty of starting over. The film has moments that are incredibly raw and honest. Will Arnett plays Alex and the performance is a revelation. Arnett has generally played silly characters in trifling projects. Arnett’s role in Is This Thing On? is the live action equivalent of his BoJack Horseman performance and the actor and the movie mix melancholy with humor in ways that reinforce each other. There are vivid supporting characters as well, namely Tess, Alex’s ex who is played by Laura Dern who gets her own subplot, as well as Ciarán Hinds and Christine Ebersole as the grandparents, and Andra Day and Bradley Cooper as the messy friends of Alex and Tess.
What Doesn’t: Is This Thing On? suffers from a tension between raw honesty and Hollywood confection. A lot of recognizable actors and entertainers are cast in background roles. Peyton Manning appears briefly as Tess’ longtime friend and several real-life standup comics appear in the film, namely Chloe Radcliffe and Jordan Jensen. These comics have been cast to give the movie a feel of authenticity but they play fictional characters instead of themselves, creating a weird dissonance in the film’s sense of reality. Is This Thing On? is about the pain of divorce but the filmmakers avoid hostility. There’s no evidence of why Alex and Tess broke up. They never seem miserable together. About halfway through the film, their relationship takes a very Hollywood turn and the conclusion comes across as a forced happy ending that undermines the whole point of the movie.
Bottom Line: Is This Thing On? has a lot in it that is honest and raw and Will Arnett is terrific. The moviemakers undercut the film’s strongest quality with a Hollywood ending but there is plenty to admire about it.
Episode: #1083 (January 18, 2026)