Marriage is no joke

Is This Thing On?feels like the kind of adult mid-budget movie that Hollywood used to make a lot of before everything became a product of intellectual property or part of a franchise. It’s really a simple story. In the midst of an amicable divorce from his wife of 20 years Tess (Laura Dern), one night Alex (Will Arnett) stumbles into the Comedy Cellar – a real and hallowed venue in New York City – and decides to try stand-up comedy.

He’s not very good. But he keeps going up, keeping his dreary corporate job by day, and frequenting open mics for stand-up comedy by night. He doesn’t become the next great comic or anything but he does find an outlet for a lifetime’s worth of frustrations and resentments that helps force him out of the rut he’s been in for years.

He doesn’t tell Tess about any of it because a lot of his material is about his failing marriage but, unbeknownst to him, one night Tess stumbles into the Comedy Cellar on a date and sees Alex’s unfiltered thoughts on their crumbling union. It’s not a laugh out loud comedy but Will Arnett’s performance is affecting and the chemistry between him and Dern is believable. It’s a film that doesn’t have anything groundbreaking to say beyond the simple and relatable fact that aging is hard and that maintaining a decades-long relationship through children, career changes and compromises is even harder.

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I must admit that I was somewhat primed to like the film, being a fan of Will Arnett and his signature, if at times self-loathing, gravel-voiced style of comedy. Less because of his role in the classic comedy seriesArrested Developmentand more for his turn as a has-been actor slash humanoid horse in the animated showBojack Horseman. Bradley Cooper and Andra Day also have memorable supporting roles as another married couple, friends of Alex and Tess, with their own problems.

Cooper is probably more known as a movie star in his own right than a filmmaker but this is indeed his third film in the director’s chair and he also co-wrote the screenplay. Check out this movie for a moving adult story about the ups and downs of long-term commitment and how we can still surprise ourselves as we grow older.

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