Is This Thing On?

I look back at my childhood as a series of events surrounding my parents’ divorce. It was always something that I thought could never happen, despite how much worse their fighting got as I grew older. I remember hiding in my bedroom so I could pretend I didn’t hear their arguments, trying to make sense of why they were so detached from the world, unable to comprehend why they acted happy in public but miserable at home.

Bradley Cooper’s third directorial effort, Is This Thing On?, plays like those same memories from the perspective of my parents. Will Arnett’s Alex and Laura Dern’s Tess try to make sense of why their relationship has become empty, why they have detached themselves from their relationship, and why they have become so casually miserable. When Alex finds himself regaining his sense of existence by turning his daily stressors into standup comedy routines, I think of my dad shifting his life to writing post-divorce. When he and Tess discuss how they stopped talking when they both knew that they should have, that things were falling apart, I think of my dad finally opening up to me about what happened behind the thin veil of happy marriage. 

But what I find most striking about Is This Thing On? is its stark differences from the marriage I witnessed unravel in real time. It chooses to believe in people’s capacity to treasure the relationships that made them who they are today, rather than let things spiral unnecessarily into disdain and distance. In Arnett’s jaw-dropping, year-best monologue, he breaks down how relationships exist solely to suck the soul out of you, he compares them to vampires. Yet by the end, his own words are proven false. 

In a sense, Alex’s sequences of standup comedy serve as a sort of narration. He gets onstage and talks for a short period of time about what has just occurred in his life, finding ways to throw in a joke or two. Since we have just seen the events he is discussing, this comedic rambling could easily appear redundant. Instead, Alex’s routines provide deep insight into what he has been unable to say out loud. It is a glorious performance from Arnett that allows you to see him process his own emotions fully for the first time. As Alex is thrust into the New York City underground comedy scene, we get the sense that it is his first time feeling embraced in years. His arc has a combination of touching reflections on love and celebrations of the community of comedy. 

Meanwhile, Tess has to figure out what her life looks like without a husband. She replaced any depth in her life with her relationships, to the point that it has made her miserable. Her background as a former star volleyball player does feel somewhat forced, but Dern’s commitment to Tess as a character keeps it afloat.

While these two characters are finding themselves, they have quiet moments where they find each other again. Moments become about what is unsaid but felt, such as the beautiful scene where Tess finds herself in Alex’s apartment and they tenderly help each other out before she breaks down in the solitude of his shower. Their children practicing for their school performance of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury’s classic "Under Pressure" gets quietly interpolated in the score here, making for one of Cooper’s many inspired directorial choices.

Perhaps Cooper’s most confusing choice is by writing himself in as a character named Balls. Balls and his wife Christine (Andra Day) are friends of Tess and Alex that are also going through marital issues. The plot revolving around the two becomes a bit too extended, with a few key scenes feeling like Bradley wrote them just to push himself to another acting Oscar nomination, but Balls is as funny as the name suggests in more comedic moments. His best choices come with the framing of the scenes, as he and Matthew Libatique compose the film of handheld closeups that amplify the tense scenes and soften the tender ones.

Is This Thing On? is at its best when it focuses on the relationship between Alex and Tess and on Alex discovering his love for comedy on the stage. I could’ve done with a solid twenty more sequences of his stand-up, especially since it feels a bit inconsequential by the end, but I still found myself moved. Love is challenging, love is hard, and love can break you. But at the end of the day, love is real. And in a world where it seems harder and harder to remember that, Bradley Cooper’s third film is truly beautiful and exactly what I needed, flaws and all. My parents may not be Tess and Alex, but there are so many Tesses and Alexes out there who love each other and just need time to work out their issues. If that’s not a deeply uplifting testament to humanity’s capacity for care, I don’t know what is.

8/10