Acting Up: Will Arnett, ‘Is This Thing On?’

The Snapshot: As a middle-aged couple’s marriage unravels, husband Alex finds new purpose in the New York stand-up comedy scene, while his wife Tess looks back at the sacrifices she’s made for their family.

(Is This Thing On? will have a wide theatrical release December 19)

Key Insights

Will Arnett delivers the most grounded and emotionally authentic performance of his career, stepping far outside his usual comedic archetypes.

Is This Thing On? reframes the midlife-crisis narrative by focusing on self-rediscovery rather than marital implosion.

The film highlights the intoxicating pull of stand-up comedy as both a creative outlet and a catalyst for personal clarity.

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The Performance: There is something eminently sexy about being a stand-up comedian. Getting up on a stage by yourself and making a room full of strangers laugh is one of the hardest things there is to do, regardless of your profession.

When someone is good at it, we revere them and we make them famous. We celebrate their ability, and demand that they make us laugh more. It’s something of a hamster wheel, but those who do it often find that they cannot do anything else. It’s more than a desire to get up on stage and talk about things that people may or may not find funny, it’s a need. A real, genuine, chemical need.

Because of that, there is also something eminently sexy about playing a comedian in a TV show or a movie. Tom Hanks knows this, as one of his early defining roles was as Steven Gold, the troubled stand-up at the center of the 1988 drama Punchline.

Do Dustin Hoffman (Lenny) and Robert De Niro (The King of Comedy) and plenty of others, including stand-ups who were playing stand-ups, be it versions of themselves, like Chris Rock (Top Five)and Adam Sandler (Funny People), or someone else, like Jim Carrey (playing Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon).

Will Arnett and Bradley Cooper both clearly know this, because in the new film which they wrote together (with Mark Chappell and John Bishop) and in which Arnett stars and Cooper co-stars and directs, the core of the film is about a middle-aged man who has lost his way and ends up finding it again while on stage in a comedy club with a microphone in his hand. Almost from the start, Arnett’s Alex is comfortable on stage and finds there’s something to talking about his life and having people identify with it and laugh about it that makes him whole in a way that nothing before had.

Not to be dismissed in this is Laura Dern as Alex’s wife Tess, who has a journey of her own. But the thing is, Laura Dern is always phenomenal and deservedly won an Oscar a few years back. We’re not surprised when Laura Dern is terrific in a movie or TV show, because we expect it. Meanwhile, Arnett is a talented guy, for sure, and has a passel of Emmy nominations to prove it, but his performance in Is This Thing On? represents something different.

Arnett has made a career of playing the fool. A rather impressive career, it should be noted, but a specific one. As magic-loving, borderline idiot Gob in Arrested Development, in his recurring role as the villainous Devon Banks on 30 Rock, even in his voice-over work on Netflix’s stupendous BoJack Horseman, Arnett is brilliant at being a doofus.

But there’s no trace of that here. On the contrary, Alex Novak is the most real character Arnett has ever played, and it fits him like a glove. So often, movies about a couple splitting up are dispiriting and a bit of a slog, but this one has a different focus, because it’s about how the couple figures out their respective lives on their own, and then decide whether or not they want to continue on together.

Arnett’s journey is remarkably relatable, but there’s also the humanity he displays with each and every line of dialogue he delivers. Arnett is the most human he’s ever been on screen, and it’s electrifying.

The first time Alex gets up on stage, it’s so he doesn’t have to pay a $15 cover charge for an open-mic night at a comedy club. The movie gives us a notion of what it’s like to be on stage that first time and how magical those laughs can be.

Arnett gives us that as well, as he navigates a midlife crisis and starts to finally understand what it is that’s important to him, and why. It’s the kind of performance that makes you hope we see more of it from him. It would be a hell of a career move.

The Career: A lot of single episodes of television and a few movie appearances were all Arnett had to show for a career until he landed the role of Gob in Arrested Development in 2003. That’s the line of demarcation in his career, as everything clearly changed because of it.

Thanks to his trademark gravelly voice, he started getting voice-over work in Ratatouille, Horton Hears a Who!, Monsters vs. Aliens, G-Force and, eventually, BoJack Horseman. That was another game changer. A good deal of his work since then, including the title role in The Lego Batman Movie, has been in animation, on top of the mostly comedic live-action work he’s done, including shows like Murderville, in which he played a detective solving a murder with a celebrity guest each week, and the Netflix dark comic series Flaked.

Arnett’s first Emmy nod was for playing Gob, and he earned four more for playing Devon Banks, but the last two were for his work as BoJack. It’s probably his most emotionally resonant work before this film, and even though it’s an animated show and he’s voicing an anthropomorphic horse, it’s as human as anything else he’s ever done before now.

Arnett is a funny guy who mostly plays in comedy, and one could say that Is This Thing On? is a comedy as well, but he plays it straight, even when he’s on stage. When he lets loose toward the end of the movie and unleashes a long overdue tirade of frustration, it feels like a release of everything he’s been building up to over the course of nearly three decades.

It’s without question the finest work of his career, and just maybe it’ll lead to more such performances. That would be good for everyone, performer and audience alike.

Key Takeaways

Arnett’s portrayal of Alex Novak proves he can lead dramatic material with depth, vulnerability, and surprising resonance.

The movie’s exploration of first-time stand-up captures the exhilarating, addictive nature of making strangers laugh.

This role may mark a new chapter in Arnett’s career, opening the door for more emotionally complex performances.