Will Arnett in *IS THIS THING ON?* - **Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Jason McDonald,**

Bradley Cooper’s gentle, funny, and deeply felt third feature turns divorce into a love story about what lingers — not what’s lost.

Bradley Cooper has built his directorial career around performance — not just in the literal sense of acting or musicianship, but in how human beings perform emotion, hide pain, and find meaning through expression. A Star Is Bornwas a grand operatic tragedy about the cycle of fame; Maestro transformed the life of Leonard Bernstein into a study of art’s collision with ego and love. But his latest, Is This Thing On?, trades all of that formal ambition for intimacy. It’s a film about small rooms, soft voices, and the hesitant laughter that sneaks in after heartbreak.

Premiering as the Closing Night selection of the 63rd New York Film Festival, Is This Thing On? feels like a conscious pivot — a quieter, more earthbound work that reaffirms Cooper’s instinct for emotional texture. While his previous films reached toward artistic transcendence, this one reaches inward. It asks a deceptively simple question: what happens after the end? How do two people, once so entangled, find the courage to laugh together again?

The film’s opening sets the tone perfectly. Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) are brushing their teeth in the bathroom, half-asleep and half-aware of the distance that’s grown between them. Without dramatics, without argument, Tess says, “I think we need to call it, right?” Alex exhales, nods, and replies, “I think so too.” It’s a breakup scene played like a bedtime routine — mundane, affectionate, inevitable. Cooper doesn’t frame divorce as explosion; he treats it as erosion, and what’s left behind is tenderness.

From there, the story follows the gentle unraveling of two lives once interlocked. Tess and Alex navigate the practicalities of separation: shared custody, social circles, empty apartments. But the real emotional current comes from the ways they remain tethered — through their children, their friends, their memories, and the pull of habit that keeps them orbiting one another long after the papers are signed.

Laura Dern and Will Arnett with director Bradley Cooper on the set of *IS THIS THING ON?* - **Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Jason McDonald,**

Cooper, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arnett and Mark Chappell, builds the film with an improvisational looseness that mirrors the rhythms of stand-up comedy — fitting for a story that turns humor into healing. One night, after a late train and a shared edible, Alex drifts into the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village. On a whim, to avoid the cover charge, he signs up for the open-mic list. His first attempt is rough, stammering, awkward — until he starts talking about his marriage. Suddenly the jokes land. He’s not performing anymore; he’s confessing. The audience laughs not because it’s funny, but because it’s true.

That moment becomes the film’s turning point — the discovery that pain, when voiced honestly, can transform into connection. From there, Alex begins to find a second life in stand-up, performing sets about his divorce, his children, and the strange melancholy of midlife reinvention. The comedy scenes are electric in their simplicity. Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique shoot them with long, unbroken takes that capture the flickering vulnerability of live performance. The laughter feels real, unpolished — the kind that happens when strangers recognize themselves in someone else’s heartbreak.

What’s remarkable about Arnett’s performance is its humility. Known for his booming comedic authority, here he collapses into quietness. He carries the film not through punchlines, but pauses. His Alex is a man stripped of pretense, fumbling toward self-awareness. There’s a gentleness to him, a curiosity that keeps the film afloat. When he looks out at the crowd after a particularly raw joke about his ex-wife, you can feel the mix of relief and shame wash over him. He’s not chasing fame; he’s chasing catharsis.

Laura Dern, meanwhile, delivers a masterclass in restraint. Her Tess isn’t angry or bitter — she’s bewildered. After decades as a wife and mother, she’s learning to live without a script. Her rediscovery doesn’t come through romance, but through sport. Tess returns to volleyball, coaching a girls’ team with the same quiet intensity she once brought to her marriage. Through coaching, she finds purpose again — not by escaping her past, but by reinterpreting it.

Will Arnett and Laura Dern in *IS THIS THING ON?***Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Jason McDonald,**

The chemistry between Dern and Arnett is astonishing in its maturity. Their scenes together play like echoes — conversations that start in irony and end in truth. When Tess wanders into the Comedy Cellar by chance and catches Alex performing a bit about sleeping with someone new, it’s excruciating, funny, and tender all at once. They meet afterward, embarrassed and amused, and the air between them shifts. The film refuses to romanticize reconciliation, but it also refuses cynicism. These are two people who have outgrown each other without unloving each other.

That balance — between sorrow and humor, between cynicism and sincerity — defines Cooper’s filmmaking here. He’s less interested in narrative payoff than in emotional observation. Scenes bleed into each other with the natural rhythm of memory. A family breakfast turns into a therapy exercise; a fight becomes a joke before turning, unexpectedly, into a confession.

Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett in *IS THIS THING ON?* **Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Jason McDonald,**

Surrounding Alex and Tess is a constellation of friends and family who mirror their struggles. Bradley Cooper himself appears as “Balls,” a well-meaning goofball whose stoner wisdom provides the film’s comic heartbeat. His wife Christine, played by Andra Day, offers a grounded counterpoint — someone who sees clearly how love and fatigue coexist. Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds play Alex’s parents, a pair of beautifully drawn characters whose enduring affection is as chaotic as it is comforting. Their home, full of dogs and casseroles, feels like the emotional center of the movie — a reminder that stability doesn’t mean perfection.

The ensemble dynamic evokes the communal warmth of The Big Chill or Sideways — movies about friends who know too much about one another and love each other anyway. In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, the group gathers for a weekend in Oyster Bay, where Tess and Alex, now quietly rekindled, sneak around like teenagers. There’s a gorgeous, bittersweet moment when Andra Day’s character sings “Amazing Grace” in the kitchen as sunlight filters through the windows, while the camera drifts through rooms full of small talk, affection, and unspoken regret. It’s one of Cooper’s most graceful sequences — a tone poem about the way joy and grief intertwine.

The film’s humor is gentle but sharply observed. Alex’s stand-up sets become a running thread through the story, each one charting his emotional evolution. Early on, his jokes are bitter and self-conscious; by the end, they’re curious and open-hearted. Comedy, for him, becomes a form of prayer — a ritual that transforms shame into empathy. When his two sons, Blake and Calvin, stumble across his notebook and realize they’re part of the material, their confusion and hurt lead to one of the film’s most truthful moments. Parenthood, Cooper suggests, is itself a kind of performance — one that teaches humility through failure.

Visually, Is This Thing On? is warm and tactile, steeped in New York atmosphere. Libatique’s cinematography captures the city with an unshowy elegance: the glow of subway lights, the humid closeness of comedy clubs, the stillness of an empty apartment. The film feels lived-in, its palette full of soft ambers and deep shadows, echoing the emotional duality at its core.

What makes the film resonate isn’t just its craftsmanship, but its generosity. Cooper extends empathy to every character, never reducing anyone to a type. Even Peyton Manning, in a small but hilarious cameo as one of Tess’s tentative post-divorce dates, is treated with warmth. There’s no villain here — only people trying, failing, and trying again.

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As a director, Cooper has never felt more relaxed. Is This Thing On? has the intimacy of a Cassavetes film but the polish of a seasoned craftsman. He trusts silence as much as dialogue, and humor as much as heartbreak. The film’s emotional crescendo — a school concert where Tess and Alex’s sons play a rendition of “Under Pressure” — feels earned rather than manipulative. As the parents exchange a glance across the gymnasium, we sense a quiet acceptance: the acknowledgment that love changes form, but doesn’t disappear.

In that moment, the film achieves something rare — a romantic catharsis rooted not in reunion, but in recognition. Cooper doesn’t give his characters the illusion of a fresh start; he gives them the grace of understanding. For all its humor, Is This Thing On? is, at heart, a story about forgiveness — the hardest kind, the kind that comes without resolution.

In the landscape of contemporary American cinema, where relationship dramas often lean on melodrama or despair, Cooper’s film feels like a breath of fresh air. It believes in the resilience of kindness. It believes that comedy — like love — is an act of faith. And it leaves you feeling something deeply rare in stories about divorce: hope.

Rating: ★★★★½

That’s a Wrap

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Is This Thing On? [2025]

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That’s a Wrap | Is This Thing On? [2025] |

“With ‘Is This Thing On?’, Bradley Cooper crafts a soulful, funny, and profoundly compassionate portrait of love’s aftermath. Anchored by exquisite performances from Will Arnett and Laura Dern, it’s a film that finds grace in imperfection — and laughter in the long shadow of goodbye.”

— Jonathan P. Noustakas

CREDITS

Screened: October 10, 2025, 10 aM | NYFF63, Walter Reade Theater, (P & I)

Cast: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Sean Hayes, Amy Sedaris

Director: Bradley Cooper

Screenwriters: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell

Cinematographer: Matthew Libatique

Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Release Date: Friday, December 19

Rating: R