Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2025)

I saw John Bishop a few times at the Carbuncle — when he didn’t have to postpone for TV double bookings — and he was fine, if not in my top ten lives comedians. There was a backstory even then — he had abandoned some kind of sales job for another role on the road. The deeper story is that he had become estranged from his wife, inadvertantly did a comedy open mic in Manchester and realised he was good at it. One night, his soon to be ex-wife was in the audience and was someone shocked — but like what she saw and they were reconciled.

Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett take this story and tranpose it to Manhattan. Alex (Arnett) feels trapped in a marriage to former volleyball star Tess (Laura Dern) and they separate. Stumbling through Greenwich Village he finds the Comedy Cellar and agrees to perform to get into for free. He is then on the way back up — he seems to have the skills, his fellow performers are supportive and Tess unwittingly arrives just before his set.

This is a traditional comedy of remarriage — there’s even a weekend away to offer a green space — and pretty much everything falls into place.

I do wonder if the film isn’t too kind to Alex. Where are the hecklers? Where is the gig where he dies on his ass? And why is the film so vague about his full time job — something in finance. Hasn’t he rather negelected it?

The cast of family friends — the interracial couple, the gay couple — feels like a little Curtisfication (minus a wheelchair user) and at points steal the film. (The exception in Cooper as Balls, who ought to have stayed on the other side of the camera. His parents, Marilyn (Christine Ebersole) and Jan (Ciarán Hinds), move from cliche to charming. Hell, even the kids are fun.

And somehow I feel Tess’s film would have been more interesting.