Is This Thing On?
The stand-up origin story of Liverpudlian comic John Bishop provides the unlikely inspiration for Bradley Cooper's pleasingly low-key drama Is This Thing On?
A guy walks into a bar... and changes the course of his life. This is how John Bishop began his comedy career, signing up for an open mic to avoid paying the bar's entry fee, and Bishop's story is the unlikely template for Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On? Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) are going through a largely amicable separation when Alex wanders into a comedy club for a drink. His marital woes and reemergence into the dating pool provide him with plenty of gag material, and he finds both catharsis and support in this new milieu.
Cooper is working in a lighter and looser register here than in A Star Is Born and Maestro. He and cinematographer Matthew Libatique establish a sense of casual intimacy with these characters, and Cooper intelligently links Alex's domestic and performative lives, literally connecting a marital argument to the stand-up set it inspires at one point with a fluid transition.
Is This Thing On? is never quite funny enough (Cooper tries too hard as Alex’s bozo pal), and it’s dramatically undercooked, leading to a pat resolution, but it’s never less than engaging. Arnett and Dern excel, with Dern delivering the film’s standout moment when Tess discovers Alex’s new hobby, a complex range of emotions playing beautifully across her face. Cooper’s film doesn’t dig deep enough to linger in the memory, but it’s often perceptive and heartfelt as a portrait of a marriage in a rut, and it’s a refreshing change of pace for the director.
Released 30 Jan by Disney; certificate 15