Film review: Is This Thing On?

A man tells his therapist he feels sad and dejected, nothing in the world makes sense and every day is a circular repetition of through the void of his depressing existence. “You need something to make you happy,” the therapist say. “The famous clown Pagliacci is in town, he always brings me joy.”

“But doctor,” the man cries, “I am Pagliacci.”

That’s the epitome of the sad clown paradox, the entertained that brings joy to the masses while he suffers from deep unavoidable sadness. To our collective consciousness this is how we see stand-up comedians, particularly because of the mystique they developed. Quick exercise, if you must draw a stand-up comedian from memory do you think of a modern frat bro or a sad angry alcoholic loud man? Do you imagine George Carlin or Tony Hinchcliffe?

Comedy is a conduit for pain through laugh, and for an artist that is a most compelling premise, so it’s not surprising that Bradley Cooper, who so far is centring his filmmaking career on the cult of the artist, chooses a sad clown for his next film. The problem is Cooper can never be very critical of his subjects. And like his previous films, A Star Is Born and Maestro, he failed to distinguish the value of art from the artist’s ego.

Based on the real-life story of British comedian John Bishop, Is This Thing On? follows Alex (Will Arnett), an unhappy corporate drone whose marriage with Tess (Laura Dern) is falling apart. They have two young children a small tight group of friends who they still share after the separation, between them an aging theatre actor with a silly God-like complex called Balls and played, with a satirical punch, by Bradley himself.

After finalising the separation, Alex roams the streets of New York and ends up in a bar on an open mic night. He can either pay the entrance fee or sign up to perform and automatically get access to the bar. He chooses the latter, and when his name is called to stage, he uses his time to air his grievances to an audience willing to hear. And the show works. It wasn’t great comedy, which the other comedians (including Amy Sedaris) remind him, but someone must start somewhere.

Alex starts moonlighting as an up-and-coming comic, slowly honing his style and working with his peers to improve his material. In the process his mood and spirit recover and the relationship with his wife (who he was not yet divorced) improves. When she accidentally bumps into his show on a date night (with Peyton Manning who impressively holds his own even though he’s forced to share the screen with Laura Dern), Tess finds a new attraction for Will and now the clown finds a new conundrum. Because can he still be funny if his life falls in the right places?

Of course he can. Cooper, who also wrote the script with Arnett and Mark Chappell, can’t blame the artist for anything. As a prolific actor, and, admittedly, a solid filmmaker, he believes the inherent talent in him is distinct and world changing. What could be an opportunity for Cooper to analyse and unpack some of the subjects he introduced in his previous films, he instead doubles-down on the adulation of the person against the nature of the work of art. In other words, he tries to have his cake and eat it too.

And that’s curious because for every good idea the film has, it’s quickly thrown out for a vindication of Alex as person, a performer, a husband and a father. Every other scene Cooper scratches the surface of a good film. He has a cast to match. Arnett is immense, but he had already developed this subject, to better results, in the animated masterpiece Bojack Horseman. Dern is also fantastic, but isn’t she, to be fair? I really like Ciarán Hinds as Alex’s dad who channels more heartwarming sadness than Alex’s self-centred approach does.

Is This Thing On? could’ve been a fantastic film but it’s undermined by a lack of self-awareness. The comedy isn’t great, but then it’s not supposed to be, and I do like the interaction with the other comedians. In fact, that indicates the film’s shortfall, that there’s a group of people surrounding him who are dealing with their own professional (and let’s be honest financial) issues, but they all have time to listen to this middle-aged man who, for all that matters, never really listens to them.

Verdict: 3 out of 5
For artists who believe that suffering is overrated.