Movie Review: Will Arnett finds therapy at the open mic, in moving marriage tale ‘Is This Thing…

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Movie Review: Will Arnett finds therapy at the open mic, in moving marriage tale ‘Is This Thing On?’

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Will Arnett in a scene from “Is This Thing On?” (Jason McDonald/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Laura Dern, left, and Will Arnett with director Bradley Cooper, right, on the set"Is This Thing On?” (Jason McDonald/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Will Arnett, left, and and Laura Dern in a scene from “Is This Thing On?” (Jason McDonald/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Will Arnett in a scene from “Is This Thing On?” (Jason McDonald/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

The Lovably Fragile Exes of “Is This Thing On?”

Laura Dern’s scowl is one of the great wonders of American movies. Her mouth flattens into a blade, her eyes constrict into lasers, and you tense up instinctively, as if you might get caught in the crossfire. There’s a moment in “Is This Thing On?,” a modestly scaled but enormously affecting new picture directed by Bradley Cooper, when Dern’s expression, a silent commingling of shock, disbelief, and fury, almost stops your heart. She plays Tess Novak, a retired Olympic volleyball player turned New York suburban mom, who has recently separated from her husband of twenty years, Alex (Will Arnett). Out with a potential love interest one evening, in a packed Manhattan comedy club, Tess is startled when Alex strides up to the microphone. Unaware of her presence, he proceeds to warm up the crowd with details of their marriage—and of a recent one-night stand, his first sexual experience since they split. “What the fuck is happening?” Tess murmurs, having had no idea that Alex, who works in finance, has started moonlighting in standup. Her date (Peyton Manning, in a sporting cameo) asks if they should leave. “No,” she says, curiosity outstripping humiliation. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

Will Arnett is in his leading man era. In real life, he's just trying to keep tabs on his teens.

Will Arnett is an Emmy-nominated actor, one-third of the hit SmartLess podcast and the voice behind more characters than most of us can name offhand. But at the end of the day, he’s just a dad wondering where his teenage son went in a rideshare.

“That’s my baseline,” he tells Yahoo with a laugh. “I literally just got a notification that one of my sons took an Uber, and I’m thinking, Why did he take an Uber? I thought his brother was taking him. That’s who I am.”

For someone who’s spent the better part of two decades delivering some of television’s most quotable lines (Arrested Development’s Gob Bluth, anyone?), Arnett is a dad first. It’s why his new film, Is This Thing On?, hits so close to home. At its core, it’s a story about holding on to the people you love while figuring out who you are when life suddenly stops looking the way you expected.

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