Is This Thing On? (2025) review

Unfortunately, yes.  Alex Novak (Will Arnett) and his wife Tess (Laura Dern) are getting a divorce after spending decades with each other (and having two sons), so to "cope" he sneaks off to comedy clubs to document his "troubles" during open mic events, but when Tess accidentally sees one of his sets with her potential new boyfriend Laird (NFL legend Peyton Manning), they try and get back together (makeup sex is a trick, never fall for it).  Not to bring up negative personal matters, but Arnett has been through two divorces so this isn't territory he's unfamiliar with, except the movie (which was inspired by the life of John Bishop) is a terrible version of Baumbach's Marriage Story: it's missing the keen insight of that and replaces it with hackneyed stand-up bits.  Making a feature about a man undergoing a midlife crisis isn't an inherently bad idea, but it needed more nuance than Cooper (who appears as Alex's confidante "Balls") and his crew can muster, and it doesn't help that Coop-the-cameraperson didn't recognize he should have taken a step back (or four) from his subject and given everyone some breathing room.  But the most egregious sin of all is cutting off Dave Attell's set, because he's a performer who knows how to transform misery (and insomnia) into an artform.