{"id":218060,"date":"2025-10-12T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/218060\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T01:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T01:52:07","slug":"bradley-cooper-directs-a-midlife-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/218060\/","title":{"rendered":"Bradley Cooper Directs a Midlife Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think we need to call it,\u201d Tess (Laura Dern) tells Alex (Will Arnett), standing over the bathroom sink while brushing her teeth, a serious ask embedded in a moment of profound mundanity. She\u2019s referring to their marriage, which, more than 20 years in and with two small children between them, has run its course. Tess, a former Olympic volleyball player, and Alex might not be unhappy with their marriage, but they\u2019re certainly not happy in their marriage, or in their own lives creatively or professionally. Their split spurs Alex\u2019s unconventional midlife crisis, one without fancy muscle cars or a hot young babe on the arm.<\/p>\n

\"Jafar<\/a> \"AFTER<\/a> <\/p>\n

That crisis is the foundation of Bradley Cooper<\/a>\u2019s blandly reassuring, at times tedious and tunnel-visioned new directorial effort \u201cIs This Thing On?<\/a>\u201d That midlife crisis also involves a hairpin career pivot, and no, I\u2019m not talking about Cooper\u2019s move into directing, starting with 2018\u2019s Oscar-winning \u201cA Star Is Born,\u201d then the handsomely staged, Oscar-bait Leonard Bernstein biopic \u201cMaestro\u201d two years ago.<\/p>\n

That pivot is in Alex\u2019s sudden move toward becoming an amateur stand-up comic, using the stage and the microphone as therapy platforms for his anguish. (But is it anguish he\u2019s feeling pre-divorce? He doesn\u2019t register much on the emotional Richter scale.) He stumbles into the Olive Tree Cafe in the West Village and, sure, why the hell not, what do I have to lose, signs up to perform almost as a lark, but his comedy becomes something the movie intends to endorse as being successful or funny, even when that\u2019s not always the case for those in the audience for this film<\/a>. For a film about comedy as part of its elevator pitch, \u201cIs This Thing On?<\/a>\u201d is curiously unfunny, with Cooper preferring to linger on the film\u2019s melancholy, \u201cMarriage Story\u201d-lite core as Alex and Tess eventually, through a bit of movie magic in the shape of a screenplay, find their way back to each other.<\/p>\n

But the general shape of \u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d is based on a true story that would seem contrived were it not real. A couple of decades ago, the English comedian John Bishop (who gets a \u201cstory by\u201d credit here, along with Cooper\u2019s co-writers Will Arnett and Mark Chappell) was working as a pharmaceutical rep, his marriage imploding, when he tried open-mic standup to avoid paying the establishment\u2019s entry fee. And now look at him: Since then, he\u2019s created multiple BBC One series. Perhaps also like this film\u2019s director, both John and the fictional character of Alex found what they discovered to be their truer calling later in life.<\/p>\n

Alex and Tessa\u2019s friend group, meanwhile, is one of mixed ambitions. There\u2019s Christine (Andra Day) and her seemingly permanently stoned-to-the-gills actor husband Balls (Cooper himself, and, yes, this is unfortunately the character\u2019s name), who are staring down the barrel of their own empty nest and a marriage that\u2019s pushing up against its expiration date. Cooper winds up giving himself the majority of the laughs, like when he suspects Alex might be seeing someone new. Alex says, \u201cI\u2019ve been doing standup.\u201d Balls goes, \u201cIs that her handle?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IS\u2018Is This Thing On?\u2019\u00a9Searchlight Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Cooper, again working with cinematographer Matthew Libatique (who cameos as a comic in the Olive Tree Caf\u00e9), operates the camera himself<\/a>, which appears to create a less visible illusion of immediacy or intimacy, with the 1.66:1 aspect ratio giving the film the physical dimensions of a European character study. The price of Cooper taking the camera into his own hands, no matter how closely he smooshes it onto his actors\u2019 faces, is self-indulgence. There are takes that drag on and on, such as one of Dern biting into a weed cookie, that could have used more editorial discipline. \u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d very much has a \u201clet\u2019s let the cameras roll and catch lightning in a bottle!\u201d feel, with Cooper falling perhaps a little bit too in love with the performances to rein in his naturalistic impulses. The actors here are predictably strong, with a swept-back, Cooper-coded Arnett digging into what is likely the most dramatic material of his career.<\/p>\n

But \u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d feels like it doesn\u2019t really get going until hour two \u2014 and those long takes can feel like gaping maws of silence that leave you begging for music or a score to be inserted so as to at least point you in the direction of feeling something. The first scene in which you start to feel like, ah, yes, there is some spark underneath the hood here involves Alex scrambling to get his kids a sitter\u2014 he ultimately leans on his parents, played by Christine Ebersole and Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, and their seemingly dysfunction-free marriage a little too much amid the separation \u2014 so that he can take another standup gig. That very same night, Tess is on what turns out to be a date with a friend who is recently single, and they happen to go to that very comedy club Alex is performing in. During his set, he goes into exquisite, vivisecting detail about the intricacies of his marriage breakup. You see the frisson, the lust even, flash across Tess\u2019 face, electrified by his candor, perhaps giving her a glimpse of the Alex she once knew, the Tess she once was.<\/p>\n

All of this really happened to John Bishop, who ended up on reconciliation\u2019s way with his wife after she saw his own soul-bared open-mic performance. So, too, do Alex and Tess start to find their way back to teach other, starting up what I suppose you\u2019d call an affair, as they\u2019re keeping the relationship a secret from their kids and their friends while Alex continues to live in a bachelor pad, with Tess in their upstate home while dreaming of becoming a volleyball coach as a way back into her old sport. What makes \u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d work when it does is the chemistry exchange happening between Arnett and Dern, who are adept at going at it one minute and then making out the next. Not that Cooper\u2019s film is by any means some kind of \u201cWho\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,\u201d nor does it have the requisite throwdown temper tantrum on the level of \u201cMarriage Story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frankly, this film could have used one. It never feels like there\u2019s any kind of catharsis, any release at the end of the crescendo, other than one taped on with a children\u2019s chorus-led cover of Queen and David Bowie\u2019s \u201cUnder Pressure,\u201d a song that always gives you that feeling of \u201cI want to run toward my future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though often lethargic and listless, \u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d does stir up a vivid portrait of the New York City underground comedy milieu, even when New York City as a character feels more like the afterthought it isn\u2019t supposed to be. Cooper casts actual comedians in roles, from Amy Sedaris as the club\u2019s peppy emcee to a dry-as-a-bone Jordan Jensen as Alex\u2019s first sexual partner post-divorce. But his commitment to naturalism and immersion takes a chunk out of your soul after what feels like a very long 124 minutes; it could\u2019ve used more spring in its step. Isn\u2019t joie de vivre what a midlife crisis is all about?<\/p>\n

Grade: C+<\/p>\n

\u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d premiered at the New York Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures will release the film on Friday, December 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think we need to call it,\u201d Tess (Laura Dern) tells Alex (Will Arnett), standing over the bathroom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[212,88,2695,73015,116350,900],"class_list":{"0":"post-218060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bradley-cooper","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-is-this-thing-on","12":"tag-nyff","13":"tag-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}