Is This Thing On?: a funny, bruised look at starting over at halftime
- US theatrical release: Friday, 19 December 2025; wider international rollout follows.
- Directed by Bradley Cooper; distributed by a major specialty label.
- Starring Will Arnett and Laura Dern, with Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Ciarán Hinds and Christine Ebersole.
- Comedy-drama about a successful but stalled man forced to rebuild life, voice and relationships.
- Festival-roadtested crowd-pleaser aimed at date-night and holiday-season audiences.
One sentence
A burned-out high-achiever (Will Arnett) stumbles from comfort into chaos and, with the help and hindrance of loved ones (led by Laura Dern), learns how to be honest on stage and at home.
Setting the scene
Holiday corridor releases often chase spectacle; this one chases the poetry of ordinary collapse and cautious repair. Is This Thing On? plays as a New York-set comedy-drama with a stand-up’s timing and a dramatist’s patience, pairing sharp gags with bruised conversations. The hook is simple—a man who has done everything “right” realises he hasn’t done the important things well—and the film lets that realisation ripple through work, friendship and love without grand speeches or convenient shortcuts.
Mid-life, mic check
Alex and Tess: the duet at the centre
Will Arnett anchors the film as a man who has succeeded loudly and lived quietly, a professional life arranged like a beautifully lit storefront with a back room he never visits. His arc isn’t a makeover montage; it’s a slow un-knotting of habits built out of boredom and fear. The character’s default mode—deflection, performance, keeping things surface-bright—makes him funny company and terrible at intimacy. When change arrives, it’s because the tricks that used to work stop working, not because a plot fairy taps him on the head.
Laura Dern plays Tess, the partner who knows the original version of him—the one before the curated confidence—and refuses to pretend that sparkle is substance. She is not the long-suffering cliché; she has a pulse, a career, and lines she won’t let him cross. Their scenes have the crackle of two quick minds trying not to say the first cruel thing that leaps to tongue. When tenderness shows up, it’s earned, not stapled on for catharsis.
Their rhythm is the movie’s metronome: joke, parry, truth, retreat, repeat. As the beats lengthen, you hear an old relationship learning a new melody. That attention to conversational music—silences that swell, tags that sting—feels truer to grown-up love stories than grand gestures ever do.
Friends, foils and the room’s reaction
Surrounding the duo is a well-cast city: a singer who is kinder than expected, a best-friend spark plug who talks in riffs and endears himself while enabling the worst ideas, a mentor whose patience is measured in sighs. Performers like Andra Day, Amy Sedaris and Sean Hayes don’t parachute in for cameos; they shade the main thread, adding warmth, razors and reality checks exactly where the story needs them. Ciarán Hinds and Christine Ebersole give the edges gravitas—people who have lived long enough to call nonsense by its name without raising their voices.
Comedy lives and dies on reaction, so the film makes rooms matter: a club where a joke dies like a moth in a porch light, a kitchen whose hum says “we’re safe here—say the hard thing,” a sidewalk whose silence can be the ice after a fight or the breath before an apology. The faces around the lead tell as much story as his punchlines.
That focus on listening powers the humour. Laughs land because somebody hears what another character meant not to say and answers it, sweetly or with a little cruelty. You don’t need to know the mechanics of stand-up to feel the thrill when a messy life produces the one clean line that finally works.
From stage lights to daylight
The act, the act behind the act
Stand-up is more frame than subject: a place where the protagonist practices honesty until it stops feeling like a dare. Early on, he uses the mic the way he uses banter at home—to distract, to keep control, to betray just enough vulnerability to look brave. When the material starts sounding like a diary entry, the film isn’t romanticising confession; it’s noticing that a truth only counts if someone you love hears it, too. Bombing on stage, as the movie stages it, is less about silence and more about recognition—this line would have saved the night if he had said it to Tess first.
Visual choices keep the grammar simple. The camera likes clean angles and a little air around faces, so a raised eyebrow or a breath cut short reads in the back row. The edit prefers rhythm over fireworks: let the bit play, cut on a laugh, hold on the moment a mask slips. A few city-in-miniature montages offer texture—steam, neon, a taxi’s Doppler horn—but even those remain honest about scale. This isn’t a mythic rise; it’s a handful of good nights outnumbering the bad more and more often.
Because the film respects failure, it can celebrate small wins without turning saccharine. A new tag that lands, a text answered instead of ghosted, a drink refused without drama—stack enough of those and you can build a different life.
Work, addiction, and the joke you tell yourself
The script clocks the difference between being busy and getting better. Our lead has spent years with a calendar that proves his value and a mind that disagrees; when the days finally clear, he discovers how loud a conscience can be. The movie names boredom and loneliness as seductions every bit as dangerous as fame, and it refuses to pretend that a supportive crowd fixes anything if the kitchen table stays hostile.
Substance use threads through the story without dominating it. The film doesn’t draw halos around sobriety or devils around relapse; it draws maps. This place is risky, that hour is worst, these friends are safe if you’re honest, unsafe if you’re not. When a character chooses the harder route, the moment is staged plain—no swelling strings, no slow-motion walk to glory—because the next hour will need another choice anyway.
In that sense, the title is a dare aimed inward. On stage, “Is this thing on?” is about the mic. In life, it’s about whether the part of you that knows better is finally listening.
Why it’s a holiday-season play that isn’t “just for awards”
A crowd-pleaser for grown-ups
December audiences want a night out, not homework. This delivers: funny without cruelty, romantic without delusion, and recognisably adult in how it treats screwups. It’s the rare mid-budget, star-led dramedy that trusts conversation to carry a scene and trusts the audience to enjoy watching people think in real time. You don’t need to be a stand-up nerd to feel the show-night jitters, or a New Yorker to recognise the relief of a fight that ends with the right sentence.
It also plays to mixed groups well. If you arrive for the performers, you’ll get what you came for—Arnett sharpening lines until they click, Dern making every look a paragraph, the ensemble spraying the room with grace notes. If you arrive for the story, you’ll get one that refuses to flatten complicated people into tidy morals. The ending lands not with a trophy but with a choice that feels like the beginning of better habits.
Crucially, the film keeps faith with laughter. The jokes don’t apologise for existing in a story with pain; they’re the tool characters use to approach the truth at safe distances until they’re brave enough to touch it. That balance is the whole show.
Planning your watch
Dates, formats and crowd vibes
United States: cinemas from 19 December 2025. United Kingdom and Ireland: festival play has already introduced the film; general theatrical rollout follows the US bow, with some territories landing late December and others in early 2026. Expect prime evening shows on opening weekend and weekday matinees as schedules widen through the holidays.
For “event” energy—laughs that ripple and applause after a killer button—aim for Friday or Saturday prime slots. For quieter rooms that let the emotional beats breathe, target early Friday or late-Sunday screenings. Premium auditoriums will flatter close-miked dialogue and club acoustics, though standard screens will still carry the film’s conversational rhythm cleanly.
Runtime sits in the two-hour neighbourhood, paced for a dinner-and-a-movie night. Plan for a little lobby linger; this is the sort of film that makes couples compare notes on which joke landed hardest and which line cut deepest.
Quick facts
At a glance
Title: Is This Thing On?
Director: Bradley Cooper
Leads: Will Arnett, Laura Dern
Ensemble: Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Ciarán Hinds, Christine Ebersole
US release: 19 December 2025
Positioning: Festival-sharpened comedy-drama about mid-life reinvention, stand-up as a truth lab, and the courage to say the right line to the right person first