Is This Thing On? is a sharp, soulful dramedy about finding yourself through stand-up comedy, featuring a vulnerable leading performance by Will Arnett.

Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? is a smaller, quieter work than his previous features, A Star Is Born and Maestro, but it’s also his most emotionally grounded. The film, which screened Nov. 3 at the Holiday Theater as part of the 48th Denver Film Festival, trades operatic ambition for intimate vulnerability, finding humor in the collapse and cautious renewal of a marriage.

Co-written by Cooper, Will Arnett and Mark Chappell, Is This Thing On? centers on Alex and Tess Novak (Arnett and Laura Dern), a married couple separating after years together. They’re still down to coparent, but their marriage has quietly run out of road.

As Alex adjusts to life in his own apartment, he wanders into a Manhattan comedy club one night. To avoid paying the cover, he impulsively signs up for an open-mic slot. What begins as a nervous ramble about divorce and midlife malaise blossoms into a revelation. For Alex, comedy becomes both a new hobby to fill his time and a means of rediscovering himself.

Arnett, who has long mined sardonic humor in shows like BoJack Horseman and Arrested Development, gives a deeply moving, passionate performance here. His Alex isn’t a tragic clown or a snarky antihero but a man fumbling toward emotional honesty after decades of deflection. The choice feels deeply personal, as Arnett has gone through a public divorce himself, and that lived-in ache informs every gesture and hesitation.

He’s magnetic onstage during Alex’s sets, which Cooper shoots in tight, revealing close-ups before slowly widening to show the audience’s reaction. You can feel Alex’s nerves melt into catharsis as the camera finally expands, a visual metaphor for the way laughter reopens his world. Arnett’s natural voice and timing make him surprisingly convincing as a stand-up comedian, which he honed through anonymous practice in New York comedy clubs while preparing for the role.

The art of support

Those scenes at the club also carry an extra frisson for BoJack Horseman fans: Amy Sedaris, who voiced Princess Carolyn opposite Arnett’s BoJack, appears as the club’s no-nonsense manager, handing out stage slots and deadpan wisdom. Their easy chemistry grounds the film’s episodic middle stretch, which occasionally drifts into hangout-movie territory but retains a cozy authenticity thanks to the community of real comedians Cooper casts, such as Chloe Radcliffe, Jordan Jensen and Reggie Conquest.

While Dern’s Tess is less central to the narrative, her performance adds welcome texture. Dern and Arnett have a natural chemistry that makes the ups and downs of their relationship seem real. Once they separate, Tess, a former Olympic volleyball player turned coach, goes on her own rediscovery journey, which includes a hilariously awkward date with a colleague (Peyton Manning in a winning cameo) whose marriage is casually open.

Andra Day brings spunky warmth to her supporting role as Christine, Tess’ friend and the wife of Cooper’s “Balls,” Alex’s actor friend who cycled through absurd roles as a working actor. Their marriage mirrors Alex and Tess’s in miniature — messy but, ultimately, worth salvaging. Cooper plays Balls with self-deprecating charm, gently poking fun at his own Hollywood gravitas.

Cooper’s most confident direction yet

After the showy grandeur of Maestro, Is This Thing On? feels like a deep exhale. Working again with cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Cooper trades orchestral flourishes for soft, amber-lit intimacy. The film glows with the texture of lived-in houses, dimly lit bars and the glow of stage lights reflected in nervous eyes.

The pacing falters slightly in the middle third, as Alex drifts between gigs and casual hookups, but the film regains focus in its tender final act. When Tess unexpectedly appears in the audience one night, accompanied by her new date, she sees Alex in a way she has not in a long time, resulting in the first honest connection they have had in years.

Their eventual reconciliation is tentative and unsentimental. Alex and Tess sleep together, then argue about what it means while she sleeps over in his new bachelor pad. Their answer, to be “angry together,” lands as the film’s bittersweet thesis: love, at its most enduring, is less about resolution than coexistence.

Despite being inspired by the true story of British comedian John Bishop, whose marriage was actually saved after his wife walked into his comedy set while they were on a break, Cooper’s adaptation resists easy redemption. It is more interested in the gradual process of emotional healing and the halting progress of people learning to listen again than in easy catharsis.

The title, Is This Thing On?, works both literally (as a mic check) and metaphorically, posing a question about whether connection — romantic, creative or otherwise — is still possible.

Small scope, big emotion

If A Star Is Born was a grand operatic tragedy and Maestro a self-conscious symphony, Is This Thing On? is a modest jazz riff: looser, warmer and more personal. It’s not without flaws; the middle act’s repetition occasionally dulls the momentum, but its cumulative effect is quietly powerful.

The film’s final moments, neither triumph nor tragedy, see Alex and Tess back together, still flawed and unsure whether their relationship can work, but now willing to talk. It’s a rare Hollywood romance that ends not in reconciliation or heartbreak but in acceptance. Is Thing Thing On? argues that relationships, like stand-up sets, are messy, improvised acts of faith.

At the Denver Film Festival screening, the audience laughed heartily and applauded through the credits, a response that feels fitting for a movie about the resilience of laughter itself. Is This Thing On? may not be as grandiose as Cooper’s previous work, but it is unquestionably his most human film to date, painting a deeply relatable portrait of two people learning to listen again.