Much has been made of Bradley Cooper’s third film as a director, which takes its inspiration from the life of UK stand-up John Bishop. It’s a killer Hollywood story, albeit drifting in and out of an atmospherically captured New York City, with romance, despair, triumph, one-night stands and a punchline. But it’s nowhere near the travails of a Scouse comic working northern clubs. The shades of Bishop are sparse, with only a few telltale LFC nods throughout (his cinematic avatar mumble-sings “Ole! Ole! Ole!” in the rush of a panic attack following his first open mic and is later seen in an LFC vest). Instead, Cooper resists getting preoccupied with the gags and maximises the human element. If the wannabe standup at the centre of the story is an underdog in anything, it’s love. 

We catch up with Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern) as they amicably navigate the end of their marriage. As Alex moves into New York City, the pair work through raising their kids and managing their friends, until…

One night, Alex baulks at the entrance fee to the Olive Tree Cafe, opting instead to put his name down for a spot at the open mic. He stumbles into a brilliant release from his personal life—a new world where he builds a following thanks to his anecdotes about his divorce. Tess, meanwhile, returns to her passion and the chance to coach the 2028 Summer Olympic volleyball team, which leads her to reconnect with an old volleyball friend who, one night, takes her to a little comedy club…

The first thanks on Is This Thing On?’s credits go to Melanie Bishop, which seems only fair. It’s the relationship, the falling back into love, that makes or breaks this picture rather than the standup. Those elements are riveting when on screen, but fall away for a large swathe of the film, betraying where the story’s heart truly is. Novak’s early lines don’t even carry many laughs (unlike, apparently, John Bishop’s opening gags, which would have set quite a different tone), but Cooper uses the standup scenes to blend an essential kind of unreality.

In the club, Cooper mainly keeps the camera pinned on Arnett’s face, an intense viewpoint from the audience that we hardly see. When he carries that fluid, in-your-face style over to Alex and Tess’s exchanges, especially at the end, he perhaps finds that perfect ground between the singular intensity of the standup and the back and forth of Tess’s volleyball. Thanks to the earnest Dern and Arnett and a story that makes us root for both parties, Cooper’s heightened sense of unreality passes largely unnoticed.

That’s extraordinary. Novak’s routine is therapy with merely a ripple of laughter from the unseen audience and the best gag coming from offstage. At Novak’s biggest moment of peril, Novak breaks down on stage, but there are no heckles or consequences. Cooper wraps it up in a scene outside between him and his father (the effortlessly brilliant Ciaran Hinds), and converts a part of Novak’s life, made intensely real by Arnett’s committed performance, into something wholly personal. 

It’s totally unrealistic, but affectingly authentic in a film of impressive soft restraint. So much of what revolves around the couple is inexplicable, and so gently captured, the pair can’t help but shine in the centre. 

Not a bad effort from a director who also takes the role of Alex’s best friend, the brilliantly named Balls. Playing the comic relief is outstandingly, well, ballsy for a film ostensibly about a comedian, but he conjures up some admittedly uneasy laughs from his milk-splatting entrance. Balls, though, serves a purpose, making Tess and Alex’s travails look like a picnic and helping to keep those slightly ridiculous stakes spinning as the pair grapple with the big issue. Also key to that is James Newberry’s score with its bobbing, sharp choral notes feeding into the Queen-Bowie classic Under Pressure (of which there are three credited versions).

Trudging through a perspiring New York, with the fluid camera switching between the couple and pivoting around the stage, and leaving other characters fluffy and superfluous, Is This Thing On? could have tunnel vision. But the gentle pace (it’s perhaps just a little too long at just crossing 2 hours) impressively captures the fabric of life, on stage and off.