The first two films directed by Bradley Cooper revealed a few key things about him. The most essential thing is that he is a born filmmaker, not just a good one but a great filmmaker. The other thing they revealed is that Bradley Cooper, for all his intelligence and humanity, is an accomplished showbiz creature. His haunting 2018 remake of “A Star Is Born” was steeped in the entertainment industry (arena rock, dance-pop videos, Grammys), and part of the film’s power was in the gritty authenticity with which it depicted those worlds. As for “Maestro,” Cooper’s haunting Leonard Bernstein biopic, it tells the story of a classical musician baptized into the spotlight; the fact that he had to keep his private life off stage only served to highlight the luminous glow of his celebrity.
After these two visions of the demanding inner lives of artists/entertainers, “Is This Thing On?” ,” Cooper’s third film as director (it premieres tonight at the New York Film Festival), presents itself as a deliberately shaggy and laid-back change of pace. It’s a story of marital separation and impending divorce, filmed in a voyeuristic, fluid style, and it’s about two people who are supposed to be ordinary enough to represent everyone.
Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern) have been married for 20 years. They live in a beautiful old house in the suburbs of New York, where they have two 10-year-old sons (they’re “Irish twins,” as Alex explains). Alex works “in finance,” which is as detailed a description of his job as we ever hear; we never see him at work (which is odd for a character who works in finance, given that work is pretty much all he does, but whatever). Tess is a stay-at-home mom, but with a powerful past that weighs heavily.
The film opens with the two of them trying to find the right time to tell their boys that they are separating. There East no good moments, and the early scenes are about awkward steps and awkward attempts at new roles. Alex moves into an apartment in the West Village – a barren place that he barely manages to furnish, although, in the case of a divorce, it doesn’t exactly look cheap. To mark his new life, Alex buys a blue and white VW van, commuting between the city and the suburbs; he also invites his children to stay with him. Co-parenting seems to be going reasonably well, with minimal hard feelings.
But there’s a showbiz wild card at play. On his first night alone in town, Alex strolls through the village and tries to get a drink at the Olive Tree Café, the legendary spot on MacDougal Street that’s attached to the Comedy Cellar (which is on the floor below). There is a $15 entry fee, which Alex doesn’t have the money for, so to get in for free he agrees to do an open mic comedy set. We, the audience, approach this in a way that flows easily, although perhaps a little too easily. Is Arnett, after all, East a comedian, and when Alex comes up there, staring into the dark void of the audience, it doesn’t really feel like he’s a “finance guy” who’s suddenly thrust into the existential spotlight of stand-up. Looking confident and relaxed, he begins to talk about his difficult divorce situation, and despite a silence or two, he gets out some good lines about it. It slides into the standing area without much noise.
Again, the film provides context for this. At the club, Alex is surrounded by other stand-up comedians, as of course he would be, but it’s not all about “Oh, this is what happens at a comedy club.” The other performers we see are all personal, confessional comics (played by real comedians like Jordan Jensen, Chloe Radcliffe, Reggie Conquest and Dave Attell), who pull jokes by pouring out their lives on stage. That this has become the new norm in comedy is the legacy of many great stand-up performers, from Richard Pryor to Sarah Silverman, but it also says something about our therapeutic culture of too much information. Just as the rise of “American Idol” marked the transition to a world where everyone, it seemed (or, at least, many more people than before), knew how to sing “Is This Thing On?” takes place in a society where the democratization of stand-up has spread the impulse for comedy everywhere.
This is now what people TO DO. They stand up in front of a crowd to make fools of themselves, attack their exes and enemies, and turn their most intimate stories into laughter. And maybe that’s why “Is This Thing On?” doesn’t feel so “inside” in its presentation of the world of stand-up comedy. It’s not as incisive a view of what goes on in comedy clubs as that evoked in Mike Birbiglia’s brilliant “Don’t Think Twice” (2016). Then again, Alex isn’t trying to “make it” as a stand-up. He uses open mic nights for therapy, and he’s not bad at it – he’s just good enough to generate a few appreciative laughs and avoid embarrassing himself.
We can definitely buy all of that. Cooper, who wrote the screenplay with Arnett and Mark Chappell, based the film on the life of a British pharmaceutical salesman named John Bishop, whose marital separation with stand-up was a story Will Arnett had heard about. But while it doesn’t necessarily strain credibility, the plot of “Is This Thing On?” ” turns a wedding story into a kind of real-life showbiz fairy tale. Alex, whose marriage has disintegrated, feels like he’s lost everything, and stand-up offers him a lifeline, a way to save himself, and maybe save other things too.
It’s an observant, bittersweet and very watchable film, but there is an inner sweetness, a slightly self-indulgent quality. Will Arnett, who has the look and demeanor of a less energetic Michael Keaton, is a likable enough actor in a slightly morose sense, but he’s done a lot of work in sitcoms, and it shows. In “Is This Thing On?,” Arnett seems, in essence, to be playing Alex as a sitcom dad — sharp-tongued but caring, lost in his daze of self-interest, with an essential quality of harmlessness that is the opposite of a movie star’s danger.
Laura Dern, so brilliant as a divorce lawyer in “Marriage Story,” invests Tess here with an acuity that never strays too far from sadness. We pick up on the idea that the separation was driven by her, but Tess’s sense of regret hangs over the film, especially when her backstory is brought up: She was a member of the U.S. Olympic volleyball team (a star athlete – there’s that hint of showbiz rearing its head), and now she’s determined to return to her sporting roots by becoming a coach. She reunites with Laird (Peyton Manning), who can connect her to this world, and in one of those, we know it’s just a movie, but come on! Coincidentally, their drink, which turns into a date, leads them to go to a nearby comedy club… where Alex just happens to be performing! She hears his unfiltered portrait of their marital arguments and sex life, compacted into a five-minute monologue. But it’s okay! It’s basically the movie version of couples therapy.
Cooper has unerring showbiz instincts. He surrounds Alex and Tess with friends and relatives – like Alex’s awkward, second-rate actor brother, Balls (played by Cooper with a cheesy smile beneath a variety of facial hair), and his wife, Christine (Andra Day), who expresses a lot of righteous hostility towards men so that Tess doesn’t have to, along with a few friends, played by Sean Hayes and Scott Icenogle, gossiping in background. As Alex’s parents, Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds are the film’s audience-pleasing billboard for what a happy marriage even is: affection and empathy, sure, but also two people who have agreed to be more tolerant of each other than they are.
There are far worse things a gifted filmmaker could offer his audience these days than a heartwarming divorce comedy. Still, “Is this thing on?” ” is a minor film that eases the agony of a marital breakdown in a way that can feel like cutting corners. Alex and Tess are well-off enough to have a very posh breakup, their disconnect is based more on misunderstanding than anger, and even though Alex is supposed to be moonlighting as a comic, the truth is that he barely seems to do anything. but stand-up comedy. Amusingly, the film even treats marriage as a form of showbiz. He says that once the demons are recognized, the show must go on.
