'Is This Thing On?' Yes, Sometimes.

Will Arnett fronts stand-up dramedy from director Bradley Cooper

In 2018, Netflix released a standup special from then-little known Australian comic Hannah Gadsby called Nanette. It ignited a culture war that seemed to engulf the online worlds of those like myself who suffer from a lack of sunlight. The special is not very good and I do not recommend it for many reasons, though in its favor, I do still remember it. The jokes do not land if they were even intended to, but what Gadsby was attempting to do was to use the format of standup comedy to critique the very idea of comedy. One quote stands out from it: “Punchlines need trauma, because punchlines need tension and tension feeds trauma.” For Hannah, standup comedy was a vampire sucking on the energy of past pain. At the end, the comic seemed to signal a desire to leave the medium altogether. Bradley Cooper’s third directorial effort Is This Thing On? at its occasional best is a brilliant illustration of the idea that trauma is the very backbone of standup comedy, but it also shows how that very fact is what makes comedy worthwhile.

Will Arnett plays New York financier Alex Novak, a blank slate of a man who is separating from his wife (Laura Dern). One night while high on a marijuana edible, he decides on a whim to perform standup comedy at an open mic night. His jokes land and he suddenly finds himself reinvigorated. Alex soon returns, starts a jokebook and begins to climb up the ladder of NYC open mic comics all while managing his failing marriage and his two sons’ reaction to it.

What makes Novak surprisingly successful at standup is definitely not his ability to write or memorize jokes. He is okay at the former and bad at the latter. No, it is his natural tendency to cope with the hardships of life by turning them into a joke. His routine is to merely narrate wittily the past few days or weeks in his life. You get the sense that he talks to the audience like he would to anyone else. As his best friend Balls (Bradley Cooper and yes, that is what they call him) says, he was “always the funniest guy in the room”.

Watching Alex get up on stage in one of the film’s many comedy club scenes is a nailbiter because his comedic facade always seems at risk of falling down. But like most guys, therapy is not an option, so baring the worst parts of one’s life for a crowd of strangers will have to work. When resting on this idea, Is This Thing On? largely succeed and justifies existing. Unfortunately, the rest of the film does not always rise to that level.

Besides the fact that he is a dad getting divorced who tries comedy, we know almost nothing about Alex as a character. Up until the very end, he seems like he only started existing at his very first appearance on camera. We never see or hear about his job beyond that he is in finance. The movie withholds any explanation for why he and his wife split until the third act and the answer is basically an unintentional punchline anyway. Despite that, Arnett gives it his all and excels at being funny and emotionally vulnerable as he has before in Bojack Horseman and even The LEGO Batman Movie.

Novak has friends, played by director Cooper, singer Andra Day, Sean Hayes, and Scott Icenogle, who all should have been deleted from the film. Hayes and Icenogle play a gay couple who have no meaningful lines or presence in the film, but still manage to be annoying. Cooper and Day do not feel like real people. This is a shame as the scenes without them in the comedy clubs feel very lived-in and are populated by real New York comedians. The supporting cast in Alex’s personal life bring an unwelcome artificiality. Day’s Christine seems to hate Alex for no rational reason. Cooper, who is admittedly funny as a complete doofus, feels like he belongs in another sillier film. These two characters, in fact, risk sinking the whole film.

Every time Alex leaves the world of comedy, the film gets duller and more aggravating. Most of the main characters are rather unrelatable. They appear to be very wealthy owning expensive property in and around Manhattan and their problems are of the most “first-world” nature. Film characters absolutely do not need to be relatable (to the majority of people, at least), but I wish the film treated them less as if they were. Either way, the scenes between Arnett & Dern about the marriage in the first half lack any resonance because there is not enough context or reason to care. Luckily, there is a scene about midway through that spins the narrative in a different, but pleasantly surprising direction that helps to save the story outside the open mic. It is the comedy scenes and this twist that tips me over on to a positive take on the movie. Nevertheless, these are serious flaws in the screenplay by Cooper, Arnett, and Mark Chappell. The film is loosely based on the life of British comedian John Bishop, but many of the issues seem too specific to the Americanized adaptation to stem from that.

This is a weird third film for Bradley Cooper. His directorial debut A Star Is Born (2018) remains rather strong, but the follow-up Maestro (2023) made Leonardo DiCaprio crawling into a dead bear in The Revenant (2015) look like the most subtle plea for an Oscar. I could not force myself to get past the first thirty minutes.

Is This Thing On? is just about the opposite. The feature barely announces its presence and its legacy will likely consist of being watched by Hulu or Disney+ subscribers who recognize that guy from Arrested Development. Those subscribers will probably enjoy the movie and then forget about it as The Masked Singer starts to autoplay. Does that make the movie bad? No. It has a handful of great scenes and a strong lead performance. Simply put, it is the kind of perfectly fine mid-budget entertainment made for adults that is lucky to get a theatrical release or even a greenlight today. This is not to wax poetic, though, about an era that gave us a lot of bad overlong, melodramatic dramedies and absolutely zero movies titled Marty Supreme.

Is This Thing On? is entertaining, breezily-paced, and, when it needs to be, emotionally effective. As thin as the character may seem at times, I absolutely felt invested in Alex Novak’s arc. Plus, at least with my taste for sardonic comedy, I did laugh at his routines.

Catholic viewers should be aware that the film includes raunchy humor and a scene of adultery. Without giving exact spoilers, I do think that the movie resolves in a way that will put faithful viewers more at ease about the way it handles relationship themes. Divorce and adultery are not glorified here, although the characters have a more accepting attitude toward them.

The film gets a light recommendation. Watch it after the latest episode of Abbott Elementary when it eventually releases on Hulu.