Prior to starting my review of Is This Thing On, I thought back on Bradley Cooper’s past directorial work. There was Maestro (2023), starring Cooper as conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein which I turned off roughly 20 minutes in. It was right around the time when Sarah Silverman appeared and though I’ve like some of her dramatic work in the past, watching Maestro felt like being stuck working on a school project with drama class kids. You know the ones, even their breathing is a performance. So I can’t comment much on this one except to say it wasn’t for me. Before Maestro there was A Star in Born (2018). The first half was entertaining, I’ll give it that, and if you’ve see any of its predecessors or any films about gaining fame, you know the rise is a fun time, but the fall is on its merry and humiliating way by the halfway point. I watched this one all the way through, and the second half fall had me wondering why I wasn’t killing myself. Cooper’s entire approach was annoyingly masochistic and a tad vain on his part being that he plays the falling star. Which brings me to Is This Thing On (2025), which is way less ambitious and far more entertaining than Cooper’s past said directorial ventures. I knew nothing about the film except that it is about a man who tries his later in life hand at stand up comedy. It’s so much more and I don’t want to spoil it, except to urge anyone who is partial to slice of life, character-driven dramas, to see Will Arnett and Laura Dern get real about marriage, sex and weed cookies. Now that isn’t to say the film is perfect. Cooper is experimental and though I’m not adverse to creativity, the film does meander (e.g. into a breakfast sing along that adds nothing) and the camera work is often distracting, especially when it hits you over the head to indicate that a character is nervous or anxious. Thankfully Arnett and Dern are intense and almost unsettled enough to hold the focus and make you forget you’re meant to be unsettled. But otherwise Cooper captures a living breathing relationship and characters going through a chaotic time. As well, the supporting window characters (Cooper casts himself as an insufferable actor, amazing) are flawed and refreshingly terrible, real and eerily familiar to anyone who’s ever crossed paths with a narcissist. Friends don’t just forget their own lives and selfish needs just because they are not the main characters within a film. Here Cooper avoids predictable, formulaic obstacles and instead points his attention on the people and their human, measured reactions instead of dramatic reasons to like one character over another; misunderstandings, lies and other such needless plot devices begone. Cooper respects the audience enough to make up their own minds as they voyeur this fractious time for the characters. It’s not exactly a romantic comedy, but it is a funny movie about love and a specific relationship, with a quieter, slower approach than his previous two films. This time around, Cooper is infectiously interested in these people, instead of on himself. I’d say it’s on.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH