Is This Thing On Parents Guide

Is This Thing On is Rated R by Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for language throughout, sexual references and some drug use. Best suited for adults and mature teens ages 17 and up. Not recommended for children or younger teens.

Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? centers on Alex and Tess Novak, played with lived-in weariness and flashes of wit by Will Arnett and Laura Dern. They’re a long-married couple with kids, now splitting up well into middle age, and the film doesn’t pretend their divorce is unusual or especially dramatic. It’s the kind of separation that arrives not with fireworks but with exhaustion. You recognize the rhythms immediately: the parents who can’t quite keep the truth from their children, the awkward half-lies offered to friends, the ritual conversations with eccentric confidants who exist to help people say out loud what they’re afraid to admit. There’s even that familiar, queasy thrill of reentering the sexual world after years of monogamy, followed closely by the stab of jealousy that hits the ex who hears about it secondhand. None of this is new. What’s surprising is how much it still stings.

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What keeps the film from feeling like a checklist of divorce-movie tropes is the care with which Cooper and his collaborators shape the people inside those moments. These characters feel contradictory, hyperspecific, and recognizably human. Take the scene that’s practically a genre requirement: one ex suddenly lands an unexpected career opportunity and asks the other to watch the kids with no notice. The favor is granted, even though it ruins a preexisting plan, and childcare is quietly passed off to the grandparents. The wrinkle here is lovely and telling. The date being sacrificed isn’t with another person at all—it’s with a room. A comedy club.

Alex, whose job is described vaguely enough to register as “finance,” stumbles into stand-up almost by accident. Wandering the West Village in a fog of post-divorce sadness, he ducks into a club on impulse, only to discover the cover is cash-only. Short on money but long on restlessness, he signs up for open mic just to get through the door. His first set is painful. There’s no sugarcoating it. The jokes barely qualify as jokes more confessions than punchlines and the silences between them are cavernous. You could roast a chicken in those pauses. Still, there’s a moment where something lands. One line connects. And there’s something in Alex’s rough, unvarnished presence that the room responds to. The other comics don’t laugh him off the stage; instead, they quietly agree he might be salvageable. That’s all the encouragement he needs. He returns, improves slightly, then a little more. Soon he’s pacing his bedroom, muttering setups to himself, scribbling half-baked ideas on loose paper and stuffing them into a Trapper Keeper like a teenager rediscovering a secret self.

Tess is on her own trajectory, and Dern gives it a bruised dignity. Once, she was an Olympic-caliber volleyball player, good enough to make Team USA. She walked away from that life to raise a family in the suburbs, and the resentment has been quietly fermenting ever since. She’d never admit it not to Alex, not to her friends, maybe not even to herself but it’s there, coloring everything. Coaching becomes her way back toward that lost part of her identity. She follows leads, revives old connections, and seeks counsel from Laird, an old friend and fellow coach, played by Peyton Manning. Manning is sincere and game, though his line readings never quite disappear into the role. He’s the one soft note in an otherwise formidable ensemble, but the film around him is generous enough that the misstep barely registers.

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Alex’s parents, Marilyn and Jan, are played by Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds with a kind of quiet authority. Marilyn is blunt in a way that can feel like a physical blow, but she knows when to put the sarcasm aside and simply be there for her son. Jan is gentler, a man who’s retreated into hobbies but carries an open-hearted kindness wherever he goes. Cooper himself plays Alex’s best friend, an actor nicknamed Balls, and the name tells you almost everything you need to know. He’s buoyant, lightly unmoored, seemingly high even when he’s not. Andra Day plays his wife, Christine, who can spin out a rambling, soulful monologue, then beam and declare, “I’m glad we talked!” as if she’s just wrapped a therapy session.

The Novak social circle is rounded out by Stephen and Geoffrey, a married couple played by Sean Hayes and his real-life husband, Scott Icenogle. Seeing Hayes here takes a moment to process. This isn’t a sitcom; the camera doesn’t hide the lines on his face or soften him with familiarity. It’s a little like the first time you saw Andrew Dice Clay submit himself to dramatic gravity in A Star Is Born. Hayes rarely gets opportunities like this, and he makes the most of it. As the comics say, he kills. The friendships in this group feel worn-in and sincere, full of affection and avoidance in equal measure. You can sense how hard they’re working to preserve something that once came easily, how much energy it takes to pretend the cracks aren’t spreading.

Cooper wears nearly every hat imaginable here director, co-writer, co-producer, actor, even occasional cinematographer and Is This Thing On? ends up being the most satisfying of the three films he’s directed so far. That may be because it’s the least eager to announce its importance. The craft is formidable: Matthew Libatique’s images are warm but never glossy, textured like lived-in memory; Charlie Green’s editing has a quiet, surprising rhythm; the performances are finely calibrated. But none of it calls attention to itself. The technique disappears into behavior. It’s the kind of movie you might initially dismiss as pleasant or slight, only to realize weeks later that it’s still knocking around in your head.

Consider Cooper’s work as Balls. Though he’s relegated to a supporting role this time, there’s no sense of diminishment. Alex is an inward-facing protagonist, slow to reawaken, while Balls is a glorious mess of a human being who could hijack the film if the director let him. His first appearance is a small comic miracle: he trips entering his own apartment, detonating a carton of oat milk like a prop from a silent comedy. He grows increasingly elaborate facial hair “for a role.” He misjudges edibles so badly that simple conversations turn into a middle-aged, Brooklyn-flavored riff on “Who’s on First?” And yet, Balls never feels like an actor showing off. He’s strange, yes, but also deeply real a clown with a soul. Whenever he enters a scene, you can feel Alex’s mood lift. There’s a moment on a dark beach where Balls seems to materialize from the night itself, grinning, fully aware of his own theatrical timing, and delighted that Alex recognizes it too.

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Formally, Cooper favors long, unbroken takes. We watch Alex mentally drift away during a friendly hangout, the camera refusing to cut. We follow him from a bustling bar, down a claustrophobic staircase packed with bodies, into the basement of a comedy club and onto the stage, staying with him through the discomfort of his early jokes before the film finally shifts perspective. The sound design is exquisite. Conversations fade and swell depending on where Alex stands, grounding you in his subjective experience. It’s immersive without being showy. You don’t think, “What a shot.” You just feel present.

The aesthetic leans toward a kind of modern neorealism imperfect, immediate, textured more interested in proximity than polish. The long takes recall the Dardenne brothers’ commitment to following people through spaces as they struggle, even though the screenplay itself is unmistakably “champagne cinema,” concerned with relatively privileged people facing enviable problems like career reinvention. The difference is that the film never pretends this world is universal. It simply renders it honestly.

The movie isn’t without flaws. Some dialogue spells out emotions the performances have already communicated. A few plot turns are treated as revelations when they’re anything but. Dern remains superb, especially as the narrative throws unexpected changes at Tess, but her storyline inevitably feels less dynamic than Alex’s. Hers is about aspiration; his is about action. We watch him fall in love with comedy, grind through the work, and visibly improve. The progress is shown, not just discussed.

Still, these are minor quibbles in a film that gets so much right. You believe in the laughter at the comedy clubs. You believe Alex and Tess once had something rare and joyful. When they crack each other up with silly asides, it doesn’t feel like actors performing affection it feels like stolen footage of a couple who still know each other’s rhythms.

Content Breakdown for Parents

Violence & Intensity
There is no physical violence in the film. The intensity is emotional rather than action-driven, stemming from marital conflict, divorce, jealousy, and personal dissatisfaction. Some scenes may feel heavy or uncomfortable for younger viewers due to their realism and emotional honesty.

Language
Strong language is used frequently throughout the movie, including repeated use of the f-word and other adult profanity. The tone reflects the adult settings stand-up comedy clubs and unfiltered conversations among friends and is consistent from beginning to end.

Sexual Content / Nudity
The film contains sexual references and discussions related to dating, intimacy, and desire after divorce. Sexual situations are implied rather than shown, with no explicit nudity, but the dialogue is frank and clearly intended for adult audiences.

Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking
Characters drink alcohol socially in several scenes. Marijuana use is also depicted, including the use of edibles, primarily for humor and realism. Drug use is casual and not presented as dangerous, but it is normalized within the adult social environment.