Will Arnett faced a major challenge with Is This Thing On? (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video): Can one of the funniest people in the world play a character who’s kind of trying to be funny but isn’t particularly funny? In an alternate timeline, he’d be an Oscar contender for his take on a sad, divorced, middle-aged guy who’s giving standup comedy a shot. But the film never got much commercial or awards-season traction, despite being the third directorial effort for Bradley Cooper, whose two previous efforts, Maestro and A Star is Born, were drowning in such accolades. So I think the question we have to pursue here is, what’s the deal with this movie?
The Gist: “We need to call it, right?” Tess (Laura Dern) asks somewhat casually as she brushes her teeth and Alex (Arnett) gets ready for bed. There’s clearly precedent for this question. “It” is their marriage and “it” is pretty much over. What precipitated this? Not the usual infidelity or violent blowout you might see in a lousy movie. We’ll be privy to some details later in the film, but to reduce it down to the broth, they just grew apart emotionally. They joke that their “last hurrah” is a dinner outing with their close friends, couples Geoffrey (Scott Icenogle) and Stephen (Sean Hayes), and Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper). And here I pause. Yes, Balls. I don’t know. Got no answers for that. His introduction to us is him falling on his face directly on top of a carton of oatmilk. It was full. Huge mess. This is something a character named Balls does. Consider all our heads scratched.
Let’s get undistracted now: Alex and Tess leave the gathering together. She stole one of Christine’s weed cookies on the way out, and they share it, and it has enough of an effect for him to instinctively get on the train to what used to be his house with Tess and their two sons in the suburbs. He laughs as he gets off and heads to his apartment in the city. He walks by a comedy club and avoids the cover charge by committing to a few minutes on stage for the open mic night. Oh gawd. Can you watch this? I can’t. I’ll momentarily avoid describing the mortification by revealing that Alex doesn’t really seem to want to be divorced. He’s heartbroken. He loves his sons and the life he shared with Tess and he gets behind the mic and starts counting the years for everyone – 26, including dating and the engagement – and unconfidently half-mumbling that he doesn’t really know what happened. He somehow doesn’t flop or get heckled for being a stoned sad sack who doesn’t really make anyone laugh, then goes home to his apartment, empty save for some scattered furniture and cardboard boxes. (Hey, at least he doesn’t have a racecar bed.)
The open-mic community is warm and inviting to Alex, though. The more experienced comics call him “sad guy” and invite him to hang out and soak up some advice. His repeat interactions with them are a throughline in a movie that isn’t quite episodic but also isn’t quite committed to being a cohesive narrative. Alex deals with his parents (Ciaran Hinds and Christine Ebersole). Alex picks up the boys and has them sleep in his bed while he takes the couch. Alex helps Tess and the boys comb through everyone’s hair after they were exposed to lice. Alex sometimes hangs with his eccentric best pal, Balls. Alex keeps his little open-mic excursions a secret, not necessarily because he hooks up with one of the comics, Jill (Jordan Jensen). Maybe he’s worried about looking like a cliche? All of his material is about being divorced and sad.
Meanwhile, we learn that Jill played volleyball in the Olympics once, and is pursuing a new coaching career. She goes on a date with Laird (Peyton Manning question mark explanation point), who proposes they go to a place around the corner. It’s fun, he says. It’s a comedy club. And guess who’s on stage making half-non-jokes about sleeping with someone for the first time after his divorce. It ain’t Bill Burr.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? I’m tempted to say this is Marriage Story crossed with The King of Comedy but Is This Thing On? is far gentler than that. Maybe Punchline is a reference?
Performance Worth Watching: Arnett is the primary reason Is This Thing On? maintains base functionality, in part because we really haven’t seen this gifted funnyguy play someone in the throes of despair. The very first shot of him is slumped in a corner, staring into the middle-distance, and seeing Depressed Gob Bluth elicits immediate sympathy that never wanes despite the shaggy narrative around him. More on Arnett in a moment.
Sex And Skin: Nothing beyond an afterglow moment.
Our Take: It’s no spoiler to reveal that Is This Thing On? isn’t really a divorce movie. It’s been gently branded as a “remarriage” comedy, so it’s no surprise to see some reluctance within Tess and Alex’s characters early on, or the later “twist” where everyone thinks they’re fighting when they’re actually f—ing. On par with most melancholy adult dramedy-comedies, what happens isn’t as important as how it happens, and Alex’s process is charted by his progress on stage from stammering to smoothed out (and a bit funny) to psychotherapeutic expressions of anger. Is it too simple to say the film asserts the obvious, that finding a means for cathartic, artistic expression is key to enduring Life And All Its Bullshit? Perhaps, but it’s true, and there’s a vague notion that Cooper is looking past that, not sure of what he’ll find. It’s as if the screenplay is an exploration more of an assertion.
Written by Cooper, Arnett and Mark Chappell – with a story credit for British comic John Bishop, whose life serves as loose inspiration – the film is smart and mature in its approach to complicated material about complicated emotions. I’m tempted to be an apologist for Cooper’s efforts and argue that the lack of clarity one experiences in the midst of marital discord colors this hazy narrative, which goes medium-deep, avoiding the emotionally wrenching elements of most divorce dramas, as well as the take-my-wife-pleaseiness of lighter, flimsier comedies. And so the film finds itself in a nether-region where it struggles to find firm footing.
However, as long as Arnett is on the screen, the movie maintains functionality, like a jalopy wired together with coathangers: It runs. It gets by. Just like Alex. And Arnett’s in pretty much every scene. And when he isn’t, Dern is, bringing weight and insight to her part, as she’s done with, well, nearly every film role she’s ever had. Together, they have enough interactive chemical fortitude the film needs to keep us engaged. Cooper leans heavily on tight closeups to convey the intimacy and intricacy of his leads’ performances, to the point where everything around them is just a blur of inessential contextual activity (or outright nonsense, in the case of Cooper’s character, who’s the film’s most inessential, bizarre and expendable element). Which is sort of what happens when human relationships crumble and force your focus inward – so in some ways Is This Thing On? is a mess, and in other ways, it feels appropriate for the subject matter. Which is to say, confused.
Our Call: Is This Thing On? is the least of Cooper’s directorial efforts. But we haven’t seen Arnett capital-A Act quite like this before, and he shows significant depth playing against type. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
