DAN WEBSTER:
Anyone who has been through a divorce knows how devastating the process can be, both emotionally and financially. And any number of movies that depict the experience have documented it with brutal accuracy.
Among the more notable examples is Kramer vs. Kramer. Robert Benton’s 1979 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep centers on Hoffman’s workaholic character being forced to become an everyday father to his obstreperous 7-year-old son (played by Justin Henry).
More recently, consider Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. In examining this disintegrating relationship, Baumbach—to his credit—gives equal time to both central characters: one a self-centered New York theatrical director, the other a burgeoning Hollywood actress.
Given that divorce is seldom, if ever, a laughing matter, Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? comes as a pleasant surprise. While not dodging the painful parts of what goes on, Cooper’s film—which he co-wrote with Will Arnett (who also stars) and Mark Chappell—unfolds in a manner that feels as honest (mostly) as it does upbeat (again mostly).
Arnett plays Alex, a guy who—as he explains in a throw-away bit of exposition— “works in finance.” When we meet him and Tess (played by Laura Dern) they are at the breaking point. Cooper hasn’t made us suffer through the long process that has led them to make this decision, but both are adamant: the marriage is no longer working.
So Alex moves out. And almost immediately, if at first a bit improbably, he finds himself onstage during an open-mic, stand-up comedy show, talking about his impending divorce. And stretching credibility even further, he achieves some success—giggles instead of guffaws—but at least he doesn’t bomb.
It helps that Alex is played by Arnett, whose comic side we’ve seen in such TV series as Arrested Development and the Smartless podcast he produces with Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes. And the camera loves him, which is good because much of Cooper’s camera work involves extreme closeups.
As for Dern, who played a go-for-the-throat attorney in Baumbach’s Marriage Story, we discover that her Tess is a former Olympic volleyball player. And at least part of what caused the marital discord involves her feeling unmoored after leaving a career that had fulfilled her since her pre-teen years.
We see their struggles—Alex’s growing enthusiasm for performing, Tess’s deciding to go into coaching, their heartfelt but clumsy and not always successful attempts at co-parenting—as they play out in relations with family and friends. One of those relationships is with Alex’s parents (played by Ciarán Hinds and Christine Ebersole), while another is with their circle of friends, most prominently the character Balls (played by director Cooper) and his wife Christine (played by singer/actress Andra Day).
In his third attempt at directing a feature film, following 2018’s A Star Is Born and 2023’s Maestro, Cooper acquits himself well. He is generous with his cast, allowing all of them—including Alex and Tess’s two sons (Blake Kane and Calvin Knegten)—to flesh out their characters in ways that feel relatable. And this includes his own performance as the clueless Balls, a self-absorbed sort who exists on the fringes of the New York acting crowd.
Best of all, Cooper never lets things get maudlin. This is true even during a sequence that, similar to a scene that Lawrence Kasdan put in his 1983 film The Big Chill, is set during a gathering of the friends that has Day and others singing “Amazing Grace.”
The central storyline of Is This Thing On?, though, always returns to Alex and Tess, two people who love each other but who are stumbling through a period in which their feelings get so twisted and jumbled that they have trouble seeing that, in the end, they truly do love one another.
That doesn’t often happen in troubled marriages, and many times for good reason. But it’s certainly uplifting to believe that it could.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio.