LFF 2025: Is This Thing On?
Bradley Cooper's most subdued film could be his best
Festival Review: Is This Thing On? (dir. Bradley Cooper)
Plot in a nutshell
Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) have separated after 20 years of marriage, leaving two 10 year old boys and two dogs in the middle. Alex, clearly heartbroken, finds unexpected refuge in stand-up comedy, while Tess considers going back to volleyball, her passion before marriage took over her life.
After the very serious and brooding Maestro and the big and loud musical with Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper has toned it considerably down with his latest. Treading familiar territory that Cooper likes to explore (namely, what makes marriages and relationships tick or stop ticking), Is This Thing On? is a much more by-the-numbers straight shooting picture, without the gravitas of layered symbolism, meticulous shot compositions, or grandiose character arcs. This is an intimate story about a marriage that has fallen apart long before the opening credits, and how two people who still care so much about each other circumnavigate around their own feelings, their two sons, their lifelong friends and two grandparents.
The camera is up close and personal, and there were a few moments where I was internally screaming “pull back!” or “make it just a little wider!” but it’s obvious what Cooper was going for. The weight of the film’s messy themes (love, marriage, happiness, coping etc.) can only be carried on the shoulders of the two gigantic performances by Arnett and Dern, both of whom are brilliant and wonderfully comfortable with each other. We can always rely on Dern to come up with the goods, so it’s Arnett, the wild card, who impresses the most. He’s never been this serious, or this funny in a serious role.
Is This Thing On? works best as an ensemble piece, so the rest of the cast are much needed glue for the story to hold until the end. Standouts are Ciarán Hinds (who just makes anything he’s in instantly better) as the juice-drinking grandad with an absolute killer of a scene in the final act of the film, and Cooper himself, who relegates himself the role of a spaced out sidekick/comic relief best friend. The result is some of the most laugh-out-loud moments of 2025.
Stand up comedy as therapy is also a fantastic narrative angle that Arnett and Cooper really lean into. Using the art of trying to make people laugh by just telling them your life story contains within it a pretty powerful message about the human need for community and communication. Is This Thing On? isn’t trying to make any big splashes, keeps the 2025 tradition of having an absolute banger for an ending, and for being so anti-ostentatious in its nature, may just be Bradley Cooper’s finest film yet. Low key best, at least.
High ET factor alert 😊