Haris Yasin
Is This Thing On?’ is the latest film by actor-writer-director Bradley Cooper. It’s loosely based on the life of English comedian John Bishop, covering the key points of Bishop’s personal life when he first started performing, namely his divorce and his subsequent accidental foray into stand-up comedy, while moving all the events to New York City and putting a different spin on the details to make for a more dramatic tale.
The comedy-drama is Cooper’s third film as a director and writer. His first was ‘A Star is Born’ in 2018, a remake of the 1937 classic. It received rave reviews, was commercially successful and was a frontrunner in the 2019 awards season. It was everything a director could want from their debut feature. His second film, 2023’s ‘Maestro’, was, at first, similarly well received. But the tide would turn against the film pretty quickly when awards season rolled around. The narrative around the film became that it was, to paraphrase, a thinly veiled, self-indulgent piece of awards bait, designed specifically to fetch Cooper a best actor Oscar, and that it had unfairly blocked out more deserving films from getting awards recognition. I didn’t feel as harsh on it, but I can’t say I totally disagreed either.
It’s all technically sound but lacking in personality.
There’s no way to tell for sure, but to me at least, ‘Is This Thing On?’ feels like Cooper has taken the critiques of his previous film to heart. It’s a far more laid-back, low-key film, and this time, he hasn’t even given himself the lead role, instead opting to play a small supporting role, where he is, frankly, hilarious as a character that almost feels like a knowing wink to people’s perception of him after ‘Maestro’. Cooper is mostly behind the camera this time, and while he still doesn’t feel like a fully formed filmmaker, he does a good job here. My biggest problem with this movie is that I still don’t feel like there’s a distinct creative voice shining through here. The movie looks and sounds exactly how you’d expect this kind of low-budget character drama to look and sound. Now, that isn’t to say that any of those aspects are bad; in fact, Cooper and his cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, put together a movie that is pretty much always pleasing to look at. But this sort of close-up, handheld shooting style, is fairly pedestrian for the genre and gives the film a slightly generic feel at times. It’s all technically sound but lacking in personality. However, these issues ultimately aren’t that detrimental. While I was initially quite annoyed with all this, my criticisms melted away as the film went on. The movie doesn’t magically fix these problems, but as I got pulled in and emotionally invested in to the divorce drama at the heart of this story, I cared about them less and less.
Dern has been good in pretty much everything she’s ever been in, so it’s no surprise that she’s great here too.
This is thanks to, in no small part, Will Arnett. Arnett is clearly very invested here, having both a writing credit and a producing credit, as well as being the originator of the project, and on top of all that, playing the lead role. He’s more well-known for his comedic roles than he is for his dramatic chops, but he really shines here. He’s pitch-perfect as Alex Novak, the movie’s stand-in for John Bishop, especially given that he has to carry the film on his back, being in almost every scene of this 121-minute flick. By not having him directly play John Bishop, the movie allows him to do his own thing, and it comes off far more sincere and natural, in comparison to the uncanny valley effect you often get when actors have to portray a real person. He doesn’t have to stretch far to get into this character, with a lot of Arnett’s real-life image leaking through here, and I think that ultimately works very well for his performance. Not far behind him, though, is Laura Dern. While she has less screentime, she’s no less good than Arnett is. But Dern has been good in pretty much everything she’s ever been in, so it’s no surprise that she’s great here too. With the events being told from Arnett’s perspective, the movie could’ve very easily fallen into the trap of unfairly villainising Dern, but the writing and Dern’s performance are very careful to make sure her character always comes off very human, even when Arnett finds her cruel.
Cooper has won me over with this film
With his third feature, Cooper isn’t doing anything groundbreaking or mind-blowing here. But he doesn’t really need to. His direction isn’t incredible, but he does a rock-solid, sturdy job here. Nothing is bad, it’s not always great, but it’s hard to complain about, and in the end, the main goal of a movie is to pull you into its story and characters, which, for me, Cooper absolutely succeeds in here. The film is frequently funny, while always remaining empathetic to its characters. It loses track of its central motif of stand-up comedy along the way, morphing from a film about the importance of finding outlets for yourself, to a more traditional relationship drama, but by that point, I was engrossed enough in Arnett and Dern’s characters that the movie could naturally pull off that switch without me realising it until thinking about the movie afterwards. Cooper has won me over with this film, and while I won’t be waiting for his next directorial with bated breath, you can be sure I’ll show up for it.
Haris Yasin
Featured image courtesy of Alex Watkin. Permission to use granted to Impact. No changes were made to this image.
In-article video courtesy of SearchlightPictures via @youtube.com. No changes were made to this video.
In-article image 2 courtesy of @isthisthingonfilm via Instagram. No changes were made to these images.
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