Film Review – Is This Thing On?

“Is This Thing On?” is the third directorial outing for Bradley Cooper, who initially made a splash merging depression and music in 2018’s “A Star is Born.” For 2023’s “Maestro,” Cooper went for style and submersion into the creative mind, making something very awards-ready. His latest aims to be a small-scale story about people, moving away from large budgets and grandiose emotion to deal with the internal churn of a divorcing couple attempting to make sense of their break-up. “Is This Thing On?” is inspired by the life of ex-athlete John Bishop, but Cooper and co-writers Mark Chappell and Will Arnett (who also stars in the feature) are mostly out to find moments for the characters as they manage domestic issues and intimacy problems. The picture mostly plays like a filmed acting class exercise, as Cooper doesn’t seem to care about the logic driving the story, out to capture unguarded moments and relationship turmoil in a feature that’s both over and underwritten. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com