'Is This Thing On?' Review
- Josh Davis
- Dec 15, 2025
- 3 min read
Release Date: 12/19/25 [Cinemas]
Genre: Comedy. Drama.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures.
The Verdict: A Must-See
Is This Thing On? is a marriage story masquerading as a stand-up comedy biopic. Will Arnett stars as Alex Novak and Laura Dern as Tess Novak, a couple so deeply unhappy that they separate within the film’s opening minutes. There’s no affair, no huge blowup, just a sad acknowledgement of the end after 26 years.
Alex is a finance guy — not the 6’5”, blue-eyed, trust-fund type, just an ordinary man who’s slowly faded into the background of his own life. Tess, once an Olympic champion, has become a full-time homemaker who lost her identity along the way.
After the split, the Novaks work out a fragile co-parenting rhythm with their 10-year-old boys. One lonely night, Alex wanders into a bar — sad, broke, disillusioned — and can’t afford the $15 cover, so he signs up for the open mic. He steps onstage, awkwardly spills his guts onto the stage, and instantly gets hooked.
Stand-up becomes therapy. It gives Alex the companionship he’s been missing: a ragged, devoted community of working comics grinding through five sets a night because they love the game, not because they’re headed for Netflix specials.
Meanwhile, Tess returns to coaching, rediscovering the competitive fire she abandoned when she devoted herself to her family. Both spouses begin reclaiming pieces of themselves they left behind.
And surrounding all of this — shaping it and propelling it — is New York City, filmed like a third major character. Manhattan, here, is frantic, frenetic, full, and impossibly noisy. The comedy clubs, the subways, the crowded sidewalks — they’re all pulsing with the same anxious energy Alex and Tess carry inside them.
But just when you think you know where this movie is going, it shifts gears and becomes — sentimental? And the theme turns quietly to: How can two people find their way back — and should they?
Is This Thing On? is genuinely funny at times, especially during its beaming club scenes, but its greatest power comes from pain and perseverance. It thrives on unvarnished honesty — the raw awkwardness of two people who left because they were miserable, but then experienced actual growth? It’s the kind of simplicity that feels weirdly revelatory.
The film is directed and co-written by Bradley Cooper, who also appears as Balls, Alex’s perpetually stoned, slightly washed-up actor best friend. Andra Day co-stars as Christine, Balls’ wife, lobbing prickly barbs to every scene she’s in.
It helps that Arnett and Dern have remarkable chemistry, so lived-in that often feels like you’re intruding on something real. And Cooper frames the film with startling intimacy: the camera sits inches from Alex and Tess’s faces, catching every tremor and hesitation. At times, it feels like an exposed nerve on celluloid.
Dern has been a secret weapon in great films for years, but it feels like Arnett has been growing toward this role. A younger version of him might have winked at the screen, but, here, he really digs deep and it sells the film. Alex is a genuinely decent guy who just went through the motions of life until he drifted somewhere unfamiliar. And this movie is about the journey back.
The ensemble is rounded out with famous faces from Amy Sedaris to Peyton Manning(!), along with several real stand-up comics — plus a few crew members who did open-mic sets during production, including cinematographer Matthew Libatique.
Cooper co-wrote the script with Arnett and Mark Chappell, loosely drawing on the late-in-life comedic awakening of British stand-up John Bishop, which adds another layer of lived-in authenticity.
Is This Thing On? shares a touch of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in its portrayal of comedy as catharsis, but its emotional DNA is much closer to Marriage Story: intimate, piercing, and unwilling to look away.
If you’re feeling stuck — in love, in life, there’s a sort of treasure map hidden in this film on how to find your way back. Follow it, believe in it, and enjoy what’s quietly one of the best movies of the year. Just like the microphone becomes therapy for Alex, this film might be therapy for the rest of us, too.
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