The Unexpected Charm of Is This Thing On?

In this sense, Is This Thing On? feels less of a piece with Cooper’s directorial turns and more like a spiritual sequel to David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, in which he starred. Instead of ballroom dancing together, the Novaks pursue their own passions; instead of the cozy, drab suburbs of Philadelphia, Is This Thing On? settles into the cozy, drab suburbs of northern New Jersey, complete with wood-paneled kitchens and batty boomer parents. The grand romantic gesture in Silver Linings Playbook—the letter that reads, “I’m sorry it took so long for me to catch up. I just got stuck”—is where Alex needs to get by the end of Act III. And, finally, as in Russell’s film, it is the actors in Is This Thing On? that overcome the script’s weaknesses and make the world of these characters feel real and close.

The movie’s warm, spacious heart lies with Arnett and Dern, the vulnerable performances they turn in, and the care with which they are filmed. The loving attention the movie pays Alex and Tess, and that they pay one another, comes through in the close-ups: how the red and blue backlights settle into the lines on Arnett’s beleaguered face, how a post-practice Dern hops into the front seat of a car and gives Alex a nervous, lingering smile. Only skilled performers like these two could make the following feel dynamic and not contrived: Tess is on a date with a colleague (Peyton Manning) at the Comedy Cellar when Alex stands up for his first non–open mic set. Not seeing Tess in the audience, he talks about his marriage with comfort and candor.

“I gotta tell you, the whole experience, to be honest, made me miss my wife,” he admits. To hear Arnett’s voice, still recognizably the actor’s own but stripped of his trademark sleaze, is affecting, and Alex’s openness brings forth a dozen conflicting emotions in Tess. Sitting in the back with her date, unmoving and hardly blinking, Dern wordlessly plays fury, hurt, shame, even begrudging amusement. “You know when your partner gets really, really quiet,” Alex says, “and now you gotta guess what’s wrong?” As Tess watches silently, processing what she is hearing, it is the viewer’s turn to guess what she might be thinking. When he follows her out of the club, panicked and defensive, she gives up the game. “It’s hot,” she admits before grabbing his cigarette and taking a drag.