Rating: R | Runtime: 124 minutes
Release Date: December 19th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Searchlight Pictures
Director(s): Bradley Cooper
Writer(s): Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett & Mark Chappell / Will Arnett, Mark Chappell & John Bishop (story)

Do you have goals, Dad?

Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? (inspired by John Bishop’s life and written by Cooper, Will Arnett, and Mark Chappell) is best encapsulated by a joke about the Olympics. Well, it’s more like the punch line to a joke about the Olympics wherein Alex’s (Arnett) verbal frustration hits his estranged wife (Laura Dern’s Tess) with enough force to knock her back. But why? Did I miss the context? Did the filmmakers forget to add context? Or was it orchestrated to perfection?

I assume the latter because the very idea of presenting it punch line first, joke second, and context third expertly mirrors the dissolving relationship on-screen. We know Alex and Tess are splitting before we know why and we learn why before understanding how they got there. We’re therefore not supposed to know why it hurt so much because him still seeing her as she was (what we don’t yet know) rather than who she is now (what we do know) is their biggest problem.

This elegant structural device ensures its grounded yet breezy parallel mid-life crises dramedy is as messy as its characters (a compliment). The drama is sound (reinventing oneself for personal joy to escape conjoined unhappiness only to rediscover joy together), the comedy softens its heavy emotions, Arnett gets to act, Dern is great, and Cooper brilliantly takes the piss out of himself to laugh at everyone who believes he directs solely to win a Best Actor Oscar.

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From L to R: Laura Dern, Will Arnett, and Calvin Knegten in IS THIS THING ON? Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Jason McDonald, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.