Is This Thing On?

 

In actor/director Bradley Cooper's dramedy Is This Thing On?, Will Arnett (Arrested Development) and Laura Dern (Little Women) play Alex and Tess, a middle-aged couple and parents of 10-year-old boys (Blake Kane and Calvin Knegten).

When we meet the family, they are entering that murky territory of trial separation that will surely be followed by a divorce.

Why they're so unhappy with each other is never crystal clear, but whatever damage has been done seems irreparable, at least at first.

The couple's boys are handling the disruption better than Alex's parents (Ciarán Hinds and Christine Eberole) or longtime frenemies Christine and Balls, played by Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday) and Cooper. They offer consolation and condemnation at various turns.

Alex purportedly works in finance, but we see him mostly palling around with his boys and dodging Tess's darts, which are sharp.

One evening, Will wanders into the New York stand-up circuit despite never having done a comedy routine. As expected, he begins to channel his pain and confusion through the mic, which offers him cathartic release, even though, as one of the regulars tells him, he's a nice guy who is awful at stand-up.

When Tess discovers Alex's moonlighting, the anticipated explosion never comes, and the story takes an unexpected turn, which reveals a bit more of the dynamic between these two ambivalent people.

Cooper and Arnett wrote the often insightful screenplay with Mark Chappell (Spotlight), but offer no easy answers to the questions posed ... the main one being, what if the "for better" and "for worse" parts of marriage are actually indistinguishable from each other?

Unlike Cooper's other directorial forays in feature film (Maestro and A Star is Born), Is This Thing On? misses some narrative notes. For example, Sean Hayes (Will and Grace) and real-world husband composer Scott Icenogle are never fully integrated into Alex and Tess's trusted inner circle. They are present at gatherings but contribute little to the story or provide any real counterpoint to the other marrieds on the screen.

Luckily, Arnett and Dern are so wonderful at playing befuddlement and frustration that it seems petty to carp about a few loose threads.