London Film Festival 2025 – Is This Thing On? ★★★★★

Released: 30 January 2026

Director: Bradley Cooper

Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern

As a filmmaker, Bradley Cooper has emerged as one of our most emotionally outspoken artists. His first two films, A Star is Born and Maestro, were deeply enveloped around the intimacy between people amidst the backdrops of musical ingenuity and struggles. Is This Thing On? operates in a similar vein, whose stripped back approach makes for a major work because of its minor stature, all of its emotions on the surface of every frame.  

Following a marital separation, Alex Novak (Will Arnett) is out wandering the streets of NYC when he stumbles upon a bar that has free entrance for those who perform stand up comedy. Without the requisite 15 dollars, Alex takes that chance for a free drink, but what he discovers is not only community, but rebirth on the open mic stage, finding a place to air what he is going through and rediscover the parts of himself that were lost to youth. Meanwhile his wife, Tess Novak (Laura Dern), seeks to find an avenue back into her volleyball career while reconciling the person she used to be with the person she now is.  

Less a film about a separation and more a film about the need to find room for unhappiness within the relationships we define our lives by, Is This Thing On? resonates on a profoundly passionate wavelength. Will Arnett gives one of the best performances this year, with Matthew Libatique’s camera catching all of the close-up maelstrom intensity of what Alex is going through. Laura Dern gets more to play with and more pathos than a role has provided her for some time now, and Cooper gives half the film over to her, providing the space for Dern and Libatique to craft a performance layered in patient disappointment. It is a pair of astonishing performances that should get more attention than they are or probably will.  

Being centred around stand-up, the film is packed with terrific jokes on and off stage but balances every punchline with an affective tambor of the character’s feelings, scenes beautifully switching between the banal humour between friends and the incisive introspection they share. But what lies deeper underneath, for both Alex and Tess, is that their separation allows them to find new hobbies that engage with deeper passions, providing them both the grace to recontextualize their marriage within the scope of understanding the impermanence of happiness to be mutually exclusive to the ebbs and flows of contentment not just with another person, but with yourself. Cooper’s use of music and camerawork make the whole experience a deeply lively one, infused with a humanity and energy that oscillates between high stakes and even tempered. 

Is This Thing On? is one of the most wonderful movies this year, cementing Cooper as a personal favourite of mine, where he so rapturously understands and visualizes all of the animating forces of the heart with such intimacy and immediacy. It has been disheartening to see the public characterize his directorial endeavours as an avenue to winning awards, and that by proxy this film is “minor” work, but within a more limited framework, what Cooper does so magically shines brighter than ever. This is no minor film and he is no minor filmmaker, his use of the highest level of film grammar always in service of materializing the kind of emotional heft that always leaves me levitating. The best kind of movies, the most special, are those that make me think often of the beauty within my own relationships and friendships, and how we can be okay with going through unhappiness together. Is This Thing On? is that kind of special movie. I cannot wait to see what Cooper does next.