Director: Bradley Cooper
Writers: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell
Stars: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper
Synopsis: As their marriage quietly unravels, Alex faces middle age and an impending divorce, seeking new purpose in the New York comedy scene while Tess confronts the sacrifices she made for their family—forcing them to navigate co-parenting, identity, and whether love can take a new form.
The Novaks have found themselves at a crossroads, though perhaps a more fitting phrase would be that they’ve reached the end of their line. Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) have been together for 20-some-odd years, and have a 10-year-old set of “Irish twins” to show for their efforts, but the verve that once existed within their union is gone. Tess is tired of Alex’s detached emptiness; Alex is tired of Tess being tired. There is love here, to be sure, something that is especially clear when the two wait for the former’s train back to the (probably) Westchester home in which they’ve raised their boys (and dogs) on an MTA platform, splitting an edible to pass the time and ease the tension. They board the train together, only realizing amidst a fit of laughter that Alex isn’t meant to be joining her; he’s headed back to the apartment he’s renting in the city as the two navigate their separation, and though he knowingly sprints off of the subway car, Tess wants to make sure he’s in a good headspace. “Are you going to be okay?” she asks through the glass. Alex stays silent, if just for a moment. “I’m gonna be okay,” he shouts back through a forced smile and a voice crack. “I’ll be okay.”
The naked eye will be able to spot that Alex is performing for the sake of his now-ex-ish wife, the mother of his children, the woman with whom he imagined he’d grow old. Not only is that a very natural response for a depressed human being – to hide their true feelings for the sake of another’s – it’s also an appropriate thing for a main character in a Bradley Cooper film to be doing. The act of performance is a central tenet of the filmmaker’s oeuvre; the exploration of presentation, i.e. whether or not the presenter is wearing a mask, putting on a brave face, or merely playing a character. In the case of Alex Novak, his act is a bit of all three. It also takes place on a terrain that he knows nothing about, least of all how to find his footing on its bumpy edges.
So sets the basic stand-up-comedy-set stage for Cooper’s third effort as a writer-director, the exceptionally funny and soulful Is This Thing On?, where said stage serves as both a therapeutic realm and a terrifying one. It’s not a trade Alex – a mid to late-40s guy who works in finance, if we’re to believe him from the one time he ever references it in the film – has ever thought to try until needing a drink and not wanting to pay the nearby bar’s $15 cover. (Who would?) When the bouncer informs Alex that he can avoid being gouged for the price of two decent bodega B.E.C.s by putting his name down for open mic night, he jumps at the chance and unknowingly finds a safe haven, one that dulls all of the outside noise he’s been battling while never staying all that quiet… unless he bombs, of course.
And while he’s hardly worth writing home about the first time around, he’s not half-bad, either, which leads to him coming back again for more. The casting of Arnett in this part would require a viewer to suspend their disbelief if not for his career-best performance, one that is equal parts convincing, frequently heartbreaking, and genuinely funny, both despite Alex’s best efforts and because of them. Described by a friend as someone who “was always the funniest guy in the room” adds up with what we see from Alex routine-wise, because we have all had our own funniest guys in the room yet would likely never encourage them to beg for a slot at the Comedy Cellar. Alex – a character Cooper, Arnett, and Mark Chappell based on the true story of the English comedian John Bishop, who gets a story-by credit here – operates on a different wavelength, though, one that works in his favor though would feasibly curse someone else’s. His painful honesty passes for humor in the beginning; by the time he eventually hits his stride, his truth has become his most reliable tool.
That Alex doesn’t initially tell anyone about his new hobby complicates matters a touch, regardless of the fact that, once he does share the news of his newfound passion with others, he assures them that it’s not a professional pursuit. That he tells everyone except for Tess – including his kids, his parents (Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds), and his best friend (Cooper) – is the real quagmire, a gamble that could either pay off in grand fashion or blow up mere inches from his face. The authenticity and improvisational quality that persists throughout Cooper, Arnett, and Chappell’s script allows for a sense of sustained unpredictability to exist inside a film that could have very easily been telegraphed and sentimental for the sake of a few sniffles. It helps that Arnett and Dern are both terrific here, not just as ex-lovers but as frustrated co-parents and confused not-quite-divorcees. Perhaps Cooper – who is three-for-three in this critic’s book, for the record – was always meant to be making others do the work rather than placing the heaviest performatory burden on his own shoulders.
Then again, it’s no coincidence that Cooper takes a step back from the centerfold and acts as a supporting character in this film, an apt choice for the path the story takes, but also for a filmmaker who has been synonymous with and defined by the showiness of his previous efforts both in direction and performance. In A Star Is Born, he played the alcoholic/addict rocker Jackson Maine, a dying star himself who tends to destroy everything in his way, from urine-stained public appearances to relationships with his paramour (Lady Gaga) and his manager/half-brother (Sam Elliott). His turn as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro — the worst film ever made according to Film Twitter but a triumph in the real world — spoke for itself, and not just because of the voice and the nose. His part here is perhaps the film’s funniest in a very pointed sense, but it’s quite nice to see him loosen up enough to play a guy who is literally only ever referred to as “Balls.” He’s also the first to express disappointment at Alex’s enjoyment of performing, given that “Balls” is an actor and appreciated Alex’s tendency to be the friend group’s “settler,” a funny nod if you really want to read into Cooper’s decision to play director here more than star.
Fittingly, Is This Thing On? is a film Cooper would sooner characterize as being about a “mid-life catharsis” than a “mid-life crisis,” and though both work well as descriptors, the former takes the cake, as watching Alex perform his way through Manhattan’s underground comedy scene never feels like gazing upon a rat inside a maze. His predicament is a discomforting one, but Alex doesn’t ever seem all that out of place in these clubs, on stage or off. The only time the film ever (regrettably) veers into a territory that one would consider “obvious” and/or “expository” is in a late-film sequence that shouldn’t be spoiled, yet it both offers Arnett a key emotional showcase and deploys Matthew Libatique’s cinematographic style so beautifully – a constant throughout, captured in a picture-perfect 1.66:1 aspect ratio so as to maintain proximity to his performer’s faces rather than the audience watching them – that it’s hard to care that it seems to have been pulled from an entirely different movie altogether.
Then again, it’s worth remembering that we should all be afforded the opportunity to explode every once and a while, and Is This Thing On? is sure to tap the mic on that front while exploring emotional exorcism through a unique and lived-in vein that we don’t often see in films that aren’t comedy specials disguised as movies. It depicts the stage as a portal to rediscovery, a way for the dying soul of a man to come back to life with every ounce of laughter; it is the best medicine, after all. More than that, it’s the kind of film that Cooper has already been making – stories about adults who lose their way and must deal with trials of varying severity in an effort to find it again – but pared back a touch, and thus into a more intimate register. Such restraint allows the film to examine one’s discomfort not with performance, but with how love – as Queen and David Bowie sang – “dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.” In many ways, that has also been a tenet of the Bradley Cooper directorial experiment all along. No wonder his sweetest, smartest movie yet is the one to drop the mic on the subject.
Is This Thing On? world premiered as the Closing Night selection at the 63rd New York Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures will release the film in theaters on December 19.
