I’ve never daydreamed about becoming a stand-up, but I’ve thought about this: someone so funny among friends that they try turning it into a professional calling. Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life, right?
This is the aspect of Bradley Cooper‘s third directorial effort that keeps me thinking about it. On its surface, Is This Thing On? is an attempt to craft an older model of adult dramedy, the kind the matinee crowd used to flock to. Cooper’s aiming for something in the James L. Brooks mold: movies about people who’ve lived lives, where those lives are apparent on screen while the road ahead is both routine and moderately challenging. Here, that’s exactly what Alex Novak (Will Arnett) sees staring down at him while just a little bit high inside a NYC Metro subway tunnel. He and Tess (Laura Dern), parents of two little boys, have decided to call it quits. Like any middle-aged man, he’s asking: what’s next?
That next sees him stumble into a bar hosting an open mic night. To avoid the fifteen dollar cover, he signs up to perform. And that’s when he uncorks something in himself he had no conception of prior. There’s something kinetic about watching Alex’s face that first time on stage, completely unprepared, sputtering out incidentally funny bits about his failing marriage. He pauses mid-sentence, whispers lines to himself before spitting them into the microphone. By all accounts, according to the working comedians in the room, it’s a terrible debut. But it’s a debut nonetheless, producing some of the rawest, most thrilling minutes I’ve seen this year.
From then on, Alex faces a balancing act. At night, he returns to the bars hosting open mics, canoodling with newfound colleagues, debuting increasingly stronger material. His daytime hours center on life as a single dad and the emergent sense of what his world looks like without Tess as an active participant. Cooper, who also hilariously plays a character called “Balls,” pulls off a similar directorial juggling act. He remains a solid if still unhoned filmmaker, and here he abandons the giant flourishes of Maestro for nuts and bolts storytelling.
But the struggle at the heart of Is This Thing On? is that the absorbing story about finding new passion later in life keeps being pushed aside for a “will they/won’t they” reconciliation plot. The front-half loads us with scenes of Alex learning how grueling stand-up actually is. “You have to write every day,” perform constantly, sometimes four or five times a night just to hone the craft. The work doubles as cheap talk therapy, just with an audience that only reaffirms you through laughter. This is where the film truly shines, where I thought it might prove to be Cooper’s best to date.
‘Twas not to be. The richer ennui gives way to something predictable and, by its end, toothachingly saccharine. Just when you think Cooper and co-writer Arnett will avoid the usual tripwires that befell Judd Apatow, who played in a similar league, the script introduces happenstantial, perfunctory conflicts. Tess takes over more running time but never feels fully-fleshed, more love interest that Alex either needs to let go of or find his way back to. By the time they’re fighting on the beach over inane crap at a friend’s get-together, the battle between realism (yes, couples fight over stupid things) and a filmmaker bending over backwards to meet audience expectations toppled my own belief in the story.
If only Cooper and co. could have trusted their initial instincts. It’s pleasant, and Arnett delivers an excellent worn-down performance, but it could have been more. Should have been.