I’ve always found the idea of making a movie about stand-up comedy so interesting, whether it’s Bob Fosse’s Lenny or the Mary Elizabeth Winstead-starring All About Nina, they’re able to translate the disparity or similarity between life on stage and life off it. This lends to something naturally cinematic as the characters have the chance to pervert or channel the truth from scene to scene, and an audience can be guided through that without being told so explicitly about the character.
Bradley Cooper, in his third directed feature, has decided to take this concept to the well-worn NYC martial drama. The film opens dryly with Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) amicably calling it quits on their relationship, after a shared edible cookie on the NYC subway after pretending they’re together for their friends, Tess takes the train back to the family home in the suburbs and Alex, on his way to his apartment in the city, stumbles into doing his first open mic at the Comedy Cellar. This mainly starts because he can’t be asked to pay the $15 entry but as his life changes (being the single dad to two kids and trying to reintegrate himself in their adult friend group), comedy seems to draw him back again and again to release the tension of his everyday life.
Is This Thing On? is a welcome change of pace for Bradley Cooper as a director, from the lofty Hollywood heights of A Star is Born to the grandeur of the important biopic in Maestro. Cooper also helms Is This Thing On? as a camera operator, taking us quite intimately through the wild, naturalistic nature of New York nightlife as the camera squeezes itself in tight comedy club staircases, whips from character to character during weed rolling/beer drinking bar banter and holds intensely on actors from near and far in domestic situations.
The performances are perfectly attuned to this tone as Will Arnett amazingly portrays confidence and conflict as Alex tells his stories to an audience of people who don’t know him but can’t say those things to the people who are close to him, scared to strain a delicate situation into becoming worse. Laura Dern equally has as much to communicate as Tess, which goes from frustration, stoicism, and yearning, all consistently found in one woman who realises how much of her life she has sacrificed to be a mother and a wife, rediscovering who she is.
The whole cast which includes Bradley himself as Alex’s best friend and comic relief, Andra Day and Ciaran Hinds commit to the feeling of this film as the laughs come naturally in their dynamics and as Alex goes on stage but so do the dramatic beats, making some of the camerawork feel perfectly in sync with what they’re doing rather than trying to domineer them.
When intense moments in life happen, we all figure ourselves as artists. We write poems, songs, short stories, diary entries and screenplays that may never see the light of day but remain as the one place we can be honest without the fear of hurting others, the power of Is This Thing On? lies in its constructed honesty from behind the camera to the humans inhabiting the front of it, learning how to be honest with one another and navigating some of the unhappiest moments of their lives with whatever they can grasp at. While displaying the phenomenon of a hobby, the film asks us if we can share that honesty and unhappiness with someone without them being scared, maybe they embrace us this time, maybe they understand us in a fuller way.
Is This Thing On? could have more depth and meat on its bone in some moments to make some moments kick as much as I wanted them to. Still, Bradley Cooper feels more confident as a director here, dealing with smaller stakes, knowing when to ramp up and when to settle, being transparent from moment to moment as Alex lives the life he jokes about every night. Is This Thing On? feels uncumbered by the usual awards fare expectations of his previous two films, delivering Bradley Cooper’s most muted but yet strongest directorial effort to date.
★★★★
In UK cinemas January 30th / Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Ciaràn Hinds / Dir. Bradley Cooper / Searchlight Pictures / 15
This post is a repost of our 2025 BFI London Film Festival Review / original review link.
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