Tag Archives: standup comedy

Hulu, indie films

Is This Thing On? Standup as Marriage Therapy

Is This Thing On? movie poster

Is This Thing On? is a 2025 American comedy-drama directed by Bradley Cooper, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Will Arnett (who also stars) and Mark Chappell. Loosely inspired by the life of comedian John Bishop, the film follows Alex (Arnett) and Tess Novak (Laura Dern), a long-married couple trying to navigate separation while co-parenting their two sons. As Alex unexpectedly drifts into stand-up comedy and Tess reconnects with her past as a volleyball athlete, the film explores divorce, reinvention, and the messy possibility of finding your way back to someone.

Although this movie deals with the (mostly amateur) standup comedy scene in New York City, it’s fairly lightweight as a comedy. You can’t really criticize Arnett’s character for not being hilarious, because it’s built into the story that he’s a newbie with no illusions of becoming a great comic. He uses comedy as self-expression and even therapy. To be fair, many professional standup comedians aren’t that different.

The movie goes back and forth between the two worlds of a struggling marriage and the comedy club subculture. While I don’t have firsthand knowledge of the comedy world, the way Alex is gradually accepted by his fellow comics and the way the audience halfheartedly laughs at his barely-planned jokes has an authentic ring. Similarly, the scenes between Arnett and Dern, as they go through cycles of anger, attraction, repulsion, and forgiveness, capture some of the messiness of real relationships.

As Alex goes back and forth between his apartment, visiting his kids, and working his comedy act, we never see what he does during the day. One of my pet peeves in movies and TV shows is characters who are seemingly immune to the everyday (primarily financial) concerns of most people. Alex and Tess own a home, somewhere on New York’s Metro North line (Westchester?), are raising kids, and we never see how they pay the bills.

Tess is recruited as a volleyball coach, but what was she doing before this? The only mention of Alex’s career is that he’s in “finance,” a single word that explains his ability to maintain a Manhattan apartment after moving out. For someone with a presumably demanding job, he has lots of free time and is able to keep nightclub (comedy club) hours. It was obviously a decision to not show anyone’s 9-5 rut, but this takes away from the realism.

There are strong supporting roles as well –Primarily Bradley Cooper himself as “Balls,” the mandatory goofy friend and Andra Day as his wife Christine.

Is This Thing On?, despite having a great cast (I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anything with Laura Dern) and an interesting storyline, is not the most entertaining or engaging film. I feel a little guilty saying this, as I agree with Time critic Stephanie Zacharek who says that this is the kind of movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make -one whose target audience is actually intelligent adults.

Is This Thing On? is not extremely long at just around two hours, but it probably would have flowed more smoothly if they’d cut 15 minutes or so. Nevertheless, it’s worth seeing if you like character-driven movies that maintain some degree of realism, something not very common these days.

Is This Thing On? is currently streaming on Hulu, Amazon Prime (costs extra), and other platforms.

 

dark comedy, Netflix, Standup comedy

Adrienne Iapalucci on Netflix: What Does Dark Comedy Tell Us About Society?

Leave a comment
Adrienne Iapalucci
Adrienne Iapalucci The Dark Queen

In her Netflix special The Dark Queen, Adrienne Iapalucci lives up to her moniker. She begins by saying, “I’m not a good person,” and nothing that follows gives us any reason to doubt this. I have no idea if her misanthropic persona is her true self. But if not, she does a great job of making us believe.

Standup comedy is one of the hardest forms of entertainment to pull off. More so now, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s gotten so mainstream that the competition is fierce, and being original is nearly impossible. Even the best of them start to sound like they’re regurgitating the same stuff after you’ve seen them a few times. The other reason is that it’s hard to know what you can joke about nowadays. The amount of backlash comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais get for their un-PC jokes probably discourages others from stepping out of line. That is not remotely the case with Adrienne Iapalucci.

Nothing is off limits it seems, as she jokes about 9/11, Muslims, disliking Puerto Ricans, and victims of school shootings, for starters. Nor does she do it playfully, like Russell Peters who specializes in roasting every ethnic group. She unleashes one inappropriate line after another without any backpedaling.

Unlike left-leaning bluish comics like Sarah Silverman or right-leaning ones like Gervais, Iapalucci seems like an equal opportunity misanthrope. I can appreciate this about her, as she doesn’t push any particular agenda, apart from pure nihilism.

I find her more entertaining than your usual standup routine, but then I’ve never been the genre’s biggest fan. At least you never know what kind of unhinged, inappropriate thing she’ll say next. Her deadpan delivery adds to the effect.

Maybe cancel culture is already moving into the rearview mirror. People are finally realizing the futility of trying to quell opinions (and jokes) that offend them. After all, the controversy attached to Chapelle and Gervais has profited more than harmed them. They’ve turned their most objectionable jokes, regarding trans people, into branding tools. I’m not sure if that makes them funnier -I’d put them both into the large category of comics whose material has gotten overly predictable. But attempts to “cancel” them have surely failed.

I searched for reviews of the Dark Queen show and didn’t see much in the way of outrage or demands to silence her. I’m talking about “professional” reviews now as I didn’t scour the web for every Rotten Tomatoes review. It seems to be sinking in that calling attention to a message you don’t like is only fueling it.

What Does the Dark Queen Say About Us?

I’m a little torn when contemplating the societal implications of someone like Iapalucci, along with Anthony Jeselnik and others whose style of comedy is pure darkness. On the one hand, I wonder if such blatant misanthropy isn’t part of an overall desensitizing, contributing to a world where empathy is an anachronism and utter self-centeredness is the norm.

On the other hand, her utter disregard for limits serves to undermine the overly sensitive tendencies of cancel culture. As Kat Timpf points out in You Can’t Joke About That, society has become unsettlingly humorless in recent years.

In a better, saner world, comics like Adrienne Iapalucci wouldn’t exist, at least in their current form. The conditions and atrocities they chuckle at shouldn’t be part of reality. But given that they are, we have a choice. We can approach them with grim seriousness, allowing only pundits, experts, and leaders to address them. Or we can let the dark comics do their thing, for better and for worse.

Broadly speaking, Adrienne Iapalucci is part of a lineage that includes Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and George Carlin (to name a few). They often cross the boundary into the offensive and tasteless. But they also hold a mirror to society, revealing uncomfortable truths that are present whether we look at them or not.