Bradley Cooper gives Will Arnett the role of a lifetime with comedy-club drama Is This Thing On?

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The marriage between Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) plays out against the backdrop of Alex’s nascent stand-up comedy career in Is This Thing On?Jason McDonald/The Associated Press

Is This Thing On?

Directed by Bradley Cooper

Written by Will Arnett, Mark Chappell and Bradley Cooper

Starring Will Arnett, Laura Dern and Bradley Cooper

Classification PG; 121 minutes

Opens in Toronto on Dec. 19 before expanding across Canada on Jan. 9

Critic’s Pick

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but: What do you call an Oscar-baiting filmmaker who decides, after two films of soaring prestige-level ambition, to make something exceptionally, strangely small?

There’s no real joke there, sorry to say, but it is still curious to see director Bradley Cooper move from the twinned scale and dramatic oomph of 2018’s A Star Is Born and 2023’s Maestro to his new comedy-club-set dramedy Is This Thing On?, a film that feels as intimate and small as his previous projects felt grandiose. This surprise shouldn’t be interpreted as a knock, though – if there is a punchline to Cooper’s trajectory as a filmmaker (to say nothing of his work as an actor), it’s that the guy turns out to be a more trenchant chronicler of human behaviour when he’s not swinging for the fences.

Interview: Toronto’s Will Arnett is ready for his mic-drop moment

Very loosely inspired by the early career of British comedian John Bishop – a one-time pharmaceutical company rep who turned to stand-up comedy to cheer himself up after encountering problems in his marriage – Cooper’s new film doesn’t follow the perhaps expected underdog comedy-star arc. There is no big break, no scene in which an agent’s jaw drops open during a set, no rapturous talk-show debut. Instead, the film simply but thoughtfully follows a father named Alex (Will Arnett) as he uses open-mic nights across Manhattan as a form of free therapy while he and his wife Tess (Laura Dern) contemplate a semi-amicable divorce.

Although Alex is a complete amateur when it comes to stand-up, he takes to the rhythm and energy of it all quite naturally, his onstage sets gradually winning over the more grizzled denizens of the comedy underworld. (Cooper wisely fills his cast with real-life ringers, including stand-up vets Chloe Radcliffe, Amy Sedaris and Dave Attell.) But this isn’t something like Judd Apatow’s Funny People, either, and the comedy-club bits are only here to foreground Alex’s complex, stubbornly loving relationship with Tess.

None of the angsty drama (or the more outright comedic bits) feels cliched or sanitized, with Cooper – who co-wrote the film with Arnett and his long-time creative partner Mark Chappell – smart enough to keep things just on the razor’s edge of heavy. That the director wrote himself an ace comedic-relief part as an actor friend of Alex’s nicknamed “Balls” helps maintain the bittersweet balance, too.

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Arnett brings director Bradley Cooper’s vision for Alex to life with balance and warmth.Jason McDonald/The Associated Press

Mostly, though, Cooper has delivered a generous showcase for his long-time friend Arnett, an actor of immense comic power who has enjoyed a long career playing the jerkiest of dolts, but has never been given the opportunity to play an out-and-out dramatic lead. Arnett’s gravelly voice is still there, almost as a comfort, and the ease to which Alex attaches himself to the beat-by-beat delivery of his comedic bits feels ripped from the actor’s sitcom-heavy CV, but there is something new about the work, too.

Arnett has to balance mugging for Alex’s new audience with genuine misery as he feels his marriage slipping between his fingers. On the page, it could read as too emotionally canny, if not factory-floor manufactured. Yet Arnett delivers something warm and genuine here, especially every time he’s paired against Dern, who perhaps knows this territory better.

As both Alex and Tess discover – and Arnett and Dern, too – marriage can be a good shtick, even if you can’t always keep a straight face.

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Alex’s complex, stubbornly loving relationship with Tess is featured in the movie, with comedy-club scenes providing not much more than the setting.Jason McDonald/The Associated Press