In Jean Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, a character declares: “Hell is other people.” If Hollywood dramedies are anything to go by, maybe it’s also true that: “Hell is relationships with other people.” In films like The Break-Up or just about anything from Judd Apatow, relationships cause an erosion of the body and the soul. Characters start off vibrant and wide-eyed, but they’re worn down by domesticity. Dreams die. Affairs, mortgages and dad-bods flourish.

Is This Thing On?, directed by Bradley Cooper and co-written by Cooper and lead star Will Arnett (and English screenwriter Mark Chappell), is a solid entry into this downbeat canon. Like life itself, it’s a dramedy that’s funny, dramatic, but much like life, occasionally dull.

Will Arnett plays Alex Novak, a working husband and dad who, for reasons initially withheld, is shown the door by wife Tess (Laura Dern, good as always). Tess is a former Olympic volleyballer who’s given it all up to be a mum. One night while Alex walks the streets of Manhattan, stoned and disinhibited, he spontaneously goes up on stage at a comedy club to avoid paying the $15 cover. Miraculously, his set is well-received, and soon he’s regularly moonlighting from his office job as a late-night observational comic. He experiences the highs of singledom; a fling with another comic (Jordan Jensen), moderate success on the comedy circuit, but also the crushing lows; smoking cigarettes alone in a semi-furnished apartment.

By chance, Tess catches Alex’s act. In an impulsive decision, the two have a one-night stand, and passions are reignited. But can it last? Can Alex and Tess keep the domesticity – and their misery, resentments and failures – at bay? Much of Is This Thing On? grapples with the question.

It’s clear that Cooper and Arnett – friends in real life – care deeply about the story they’re telling. Both have been candid about their struggles with sobriety and family. Arnett and Dern’s chemistry onscreen feels lived-in, their characters are realised and three-dimensional. Which is great, because when it works, Is This Thing On? pulses with an unvarnished tracksuity realism. Cooper pulled off a similar trick in A Star is Born, offsetting a schmaltzy premise with emotional grit. And plenty of cigarettes.

Frustratingly, it’s also a bit of a gimmick. Is This Thing On? can’t avoid the narrative beats of a romcom. Hell turns out not to be other people, it’s being alone. And no matter how drab and hellish the interiority of a relationship can become, it’s worth staying in there for. Alex and Tess’s emancipation is the most exciting thing the film portrays, and then it spends an hour putting them back together. Inevitably, they realise that everything they ever wanted was right there in front of them all along. There’s even a climactic monologue at the front door – replete with a catchphrase – that could be straight out of Jerry Maguire or Notting Hill. Which makes the denouement of Is This Thing On? a bit conventional, a bit ungritty, and a bit of a cop-out.

 

Is This Thing On? opens today in Australian cinemas.