Review:
"Is This Thing On?"
Release Date: Jan. 9, 2026 Rating: R Running Time: 121 minutes As a director, Bradley Cooper remains solely concerned with how the creative process works for an individual talent. His prior films, Maestro and A Star is Born, focused on immensely gifted, assured, and successful men of music—one real, one fictional—and how their genius impacted others around them for the better and for the worst. What separates Cooper’s third directorial effort Is This Thing On? from Maestro and A Star is Born is that the aspiring stand-up comedian at the heart of this quiet and intimate character study is a marginally talented everyman in search of himself and inner peace and happiness. Will Arnett, who co-wrote Is This Thing On? with Cooper and Mark Chappell, stars as Alex Novak, the most soon-to-be divorced man in New York. Struggling from his recent separation from his wife Tess (Laura Dern), a depressed Alex wanders into Manhattan’s famed Comedy Club and makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to sign up for an open-mic slot. “I think I’m getting a divorce. What tipped me off was that I’m living in an apartment on my own and my wife and kids don’t live there,” Alex tells the packed but welcoming room with barely a hint of hesitation. Alex gets enough laughs to inspire him to return night after night to the Comedy Cellar. He’s never going to be John Mulaney or Dave Chappelle, but that’s not the point of Is This Thing On? For Cooper, the stage is a safe place. Alex is an emotionally vulnerable, psychologically pained middle-aged man forced to restart his life, and performing stand-up comedy allows him to not just to find his voice but to make himself heard. Sure, some nights he is going to bomb or bare himself in a way that could potentially prove embarrassing, but that doesn’t matter. He’s found his community, and he feels loved and accepted. The film also keeps Alex’s aspirations simple. He does not want to be a world-famous funnyman. He just wants to be a better father to his two sons and to be the best future ex-husband to the wife he still loves and adores. This plays into Alex’s creative process. His life and livelihood does not depend on what he does on stage, so there is no pressure to be the funniest person in the room. He just writes down whatever pops into his head that he thinks is funny and will work on stage. He’s not the Leonard Bernstein of Maestro, and that’s fine with Is This Thing On? There are major talents in the world, there are minor worlds, and there’s Alex and the rest of us. The always affable Arnett does not have a stand-up background, and that works very much in his favor of Alex. He is raw and awkward on stage at the beginning of the film, but his confident grows and his delivery improves with each performance. His routines aren’t necessarily funny—it’s mostly obvious dad and divorce jokes—but what he says is not just his truth but identifiable to many people in the same position. There’s nothing varnished about Alex, and Cooper reflects this in the direct and honest way he shoots Is This Thing On? This is an intimate and grounded exploration of one man who aspires to be the best version of himself under difficult circumstance and through the most unexpected of ways. It also helps that Is This Thing On? does not want to be Kramer vs. Kramer. Yes, Alex and his estranged wife Tess disagree and argue as they go their separate ways. And they hurt each other—this is never more evident than when and how Tess learns about Alex’s stand-up endeavors. But they don’t tear into each other, they don’t hate each other, and they don’t pit their children against each other. Both seem to care for each other and want what’s best for each other. Most important, Is This Thing On? actually concerns itself with what Tess wants for herself in life. Played by the open and forthright Laura Dern, Tess is very much her own person in Is This Thing On? She is never portrayed as the villain. She is very much in the same situation as Alex is, although starting over for her is harder than it is for Alex. Unlike Alex, Tess does not have a career. And Is This Thing On? makes the necessary time and space to let Tess undertake her own journey in her post-marriage life. If Is This Thing On? does have a flaw, it is that the relationship between Alex and Tess never seems like it is close to being over and done with. When Alex is not on stage, he’s usually with Tess. And they behave like an old married couple able to move past their differences, not like exes moving on with their lives. Is This Thing On? makes us long for Alex and Tess to give their marriage another shot. Which often gets in the way of celebrating how they have been able to move forward with their lives without each other. Aired: Jan. 7, 2026. Web site: https://www.searchlightpictures.com/is-this-thing-on |
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