(3 stars)
“Is This Thing On?” wastes no time in telegraphing all we need to know about middle-aged dad Alex Novak. The opening scene is set in an elementary school gym, where children squeal and marvel at a Lunar New Year celebration that features performers maneuvering a giant red lion around a basketball court. The camera pans from the ecstatic onlookers to Alex, who’s wearing a black suit and sitting on a bench in a far corner, head resting on a wall, eyes unseeing.
For Alex, played by Will Arnett, malaise is the default setting. Later, his wife, Tess (Laura Dern), takes a break from brushing her teeth to tell him, “We need to call it.” And by “it” she means their marriage. It would be unfair to say that Alex puts up no fight, because that would imply he has the energy to so much as sneeze at an opponent. He does not. Somewhere along the way, someone or something pulled an invisible plug, and Alex’s vitality swirled down the drain.
In some ways, this dramedy, directed by Bradley Cooper, is a familiar story about midlife crises and marital dissatisfaction, but it quickly swerves in a fresh direction, resulting in a movie that’s both resonant and hilarious. For one thing, there’s little bitterness between Tess and Alex. After the pair have dinner with friends — their “last hurrah” — they walk to the subway and chat like old buddies; they split a pot-laced cookie Tess pilfered from their hosts’ kitchen. Then Alex wanders around New York and winds up at a bar where he signs up to perform stand-up at an open mic only to avoid paying the $15 cover.
Any viewer with even a mild case of stage fright will hold their breath as Alex walks toward the stage like a man heading for the gallows, and the camerawork turns a screw on the tension. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique maintains a tight shot on Alex’s face under the bright lights, so that we can practically see synapses fire as he second-guesses his life choices, unleashes a string of throat-clearing noises and then haltingly launches into a brief recap of his recent misery. At first, chuckles from the audience are as awkward and tentative as Alex’s delivery, but his demeanor soon transforms, ever-so-slightly, as the crowd warms up to his deadpan storytelling. Afterward, the newly minted comedian goes to the bathroom, adrenaline still coursing as he exuberantly shout-sings “Ole! Ole! Ole!” into the mirror. For a moment, we’re reminded of those kids in the gym, the way their feelings seemed to get too big for their bodies, spilling out as shrieks and shimmies.
The title “Is This Thing On?” is a reference to the microphones that Alex begins handling with increasing frequency as he turns stand-up comedy into a therapeutic hobby, but the question could be just as easily applied to the man himself. Alex — and Tess, too — have become spectators in a life they don’t even seem to want to watch. The screenplay, a collaboration between Cooper, Arnett and sitcom writer Mark Chappell, mines the couple’s parallel reawakenings for gems both comedic and poignant. When Alex, in his sad single-dad apartment, folds the laundry of his 10-year-old sons (“Irish twins,” Alex clarifies onstage, which is why, he says, he pulled an Irish goodbye), the very act guts him, though it’s easy to imagine a moment in the not-so-distant past when he would have sleepwalked through such a mundane chore.
Arnett and Dern are pros at threading a needle, conveying anguish without turning the mood maudlin, acting irrationally in the most plausible and sympathetic of ways. The script’s many mournful moments are balanced by levity, especially in Cooper’s supporting role as a hapless actor named Balls who’s either constantly high or a little stupid (both?) and Arnett’s evolving stand-up material, delivered with a sardonic voice that sounds like gravel in a garbage disposal.
The movie makes compelling points about how easy it is for parents to lose themselves and for partners to lose each other — the way things left unsaid begin to pile up alongside the dirty dishes and overflowing laundry. Although the bulk of the movie focuses on Alex’s experiences, we occasionally see things from Tess’s perspective, getting a sense of the grief she feels over letting go of her past as an elite athlete, leaving a hole that marriage and motherhood never managed to fill. (In a funny twist, her closest confidante is Alex’s warm and witty mother, played by Christine Ebersole.)
As Alex and Tess begin to find fulfilling ways to spend their time and envision new, separate futures for themselves, a question nags at them: Was it really the marriage that made them miserable, or did they do that on their own? There’s no easy answer to that one. But watching them work it out is great fun.
R. At AMC Georgetown and the Avalon Theatre. Contains strong language, drug use and sexual situations. 124 minutes.
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