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Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?” Is…Uhm, Congenial

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Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has called Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? (Searchlight, 12.19), which I saw last night at Alice Tully Hall, “a feel-good divorce film”.

That’s a fairly accurate description — it’s a kinder, warmer, far-less-hostile Marriage Story, and the general behavioral drift is amiable. It’s superbly acted all around, but it also has a bit of a flabby belly. For my money it’s way too happy, too mellow, too easygoing, too turn-the other-cheek. No real conflict, no real challenges, no “drama”, no heavy pivots.

Set in the flush environs of Manhattan’s West Village and a handsome home in Westchester County, it’s mainly about Alex and Tess (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), a 40ish husband and wife with two ten-year-old boys (they’re called “Irish twins” due to having been born less than a year apart).

The key situation is that Alex and Tess have decided to call it quits because…well, because they’ve been written this way. The dramatic engine, if you will, is basically about Alex dipping his toe into the waters of Manhattan stand-up comedy as a form of therapy, using his personal saga for material. It’s also about personal renewal.

But the film, directed and co-written by Cooper, is also about gliding and sliding and loping along without pushing any of the usual emotionally fraught buttons.

It’s obvious early on that Cooper has decided to steer clear of Noah Baumbach territory and the usual “we’re getting divorced and boy, it’s pretty hard to do this with kids”, not to mention zero interest in the usual dramatic devices and considerations (lawyers, alimony, etc.)

But mainly it reminded me of a French ensemble relationship dramedy, except these French films (we’ve all seen dozens over the decades) tend to throw in more in the way of plot surprises, goofball humor, narrative curve balls.

For those who haven’t had the repeated pleasure, French ensemble relationship movies are defined by their complex, character-driven narratives that explore the messy, intertwined lives of a group of friends or family.

I can’t imagine anyone hating or even disliking Is This Thing On?, but it’s not meaty or nervy or risky enough to inspire anything more than easy smiles and shoulder–shrugs.

Is This Thing On? is the kind of film that a loaded, well liked actor-director makes when he has several reasons to be feel pumped and happy about things…a guy who feels abundantly massaged and tickled by his more-or-less fantastic life.

Compare Cooper’s film with another NYC dramedy about four highly perceptive, financially comfortable, middle-aged marrieds coping with divorce — Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives. That 1992 film has always been aces on its own terms, but compared to Is This Thing On? it’s an earth-shaking Chekhovian classic.

It’s worth noting that Alex and Tess are living flush, bordering-on-financially-opulent lives without the movie even glancing for a split second at where all this money-from-heaven is coming from. (Alex, we’re told, is in “finance”…pretty vague.)

Alex’s reasonably spacious West Village pad rents for, I’m guessing, at least $6K or $7K a month, if not more. Compare Alex’s living situation (he owns a car and probably pays $1500 or $2K a month for the garage-space rental, and yet, early on, he doesn’t want to pay a $15 cover charge at the comedy cellar)…compare Alex’s place to Chris Evans’ appallingly grungy Brooklyn-bro share or even Dakota Johnson’s slightly modest 1 bdr. apartment in Materialists.

If Arnett and Dern were in their early to mid 40s, it would be one thing in terms of the lore of Alan J. Pakula‘s Starting Over (’79) and middle-aged crazy and hormonal activity and whatnot. But Arnett is 55 and looks it (dyed hair, salt-and-pepper whiskers, not rail thin) and Dern is 58.

That said, I reveled in one of the most vigorous and glorious sexual affairs of my life when I was past my 50s so who am I to talk, right?

Gleiberman: “It’s an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie, yet there’s a softness to it, a slightly pandering quality. It’s like a James L. Brooks movie with hipper camerawork. Arnett, who has the look and demeanor of a less energized Michael Keaton, is a likable enough actor in a rather mopey way, but he’s done a lot of sitcom work and it shows. Arnett seems, in essence, to be playing Alex as a sitcom dad — sharp-tongued yet benign, lost in his daze of self-interest, with an essential quality of harmlessness that’s the opposite of movie-star danger.”

Perfect Denouement

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“I’ve been poor my whole life. So were my parents, and their parents before them. It’s like a disease, passing from generation to generation [and] becomes a sickness. That’s what it is.”

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Astrological Bigotry

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I’ve been coping all my life with astrology bigots who’ve been describing me and my flock (Scorpios) as scalpel-tongued, stingingly judgmental, mysterious, secretive and overbearing, not to mention ravenous sex serpents.

To which I’ve been saying for decades, “Okay, sure, here and there… HE would be nothing if not for my surgical precision with words and a natural tendency to cut through the bullshit, but otherwise take your toxic character assassination tropes and shove them up your ass, and sideways at that.”

This is the basis for my empathy with POCs who’ve been fending off crude cultural stereotype descriptions all their lives.

The idea that everyone born each year between October 24th and November 22 shares many of these basic traits is, of course, absurd. Plus whatever I may have been (or have been like) in my youth and early middle age…all that hormonally intense crap sailed a long time ago.

According to The Astrology Bible, Scorpio’s colors are deep red, maroon, black, and brown. Bullshit — all my life I’ve been drawn to deep blues, blacks and grays. I own one deep red garment — a 1950s James Dean Rebel Without A Cause jacket — but I always feel uncomfortable wearing it. Plus I hate maroon, burgundy, or ox-blood colors.

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Great Bolts of Lightning

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In other words, if Joe Biden had stubbornly refused to drop out and miraculously, incredulously and in a total pig’s eye had beaten Donald Trump in the ’24 election, vp Kamala Harris would have almost certainly become president before the end of Joe’s second term, and probably, to be honest, by early to mid ’26.

He’s obviously not long for this mortal coil.

If Joe had announced he’s a one-term president in, say, early to mid ’23, he could have gone out like a hero. Now his legacy is in the toilet, and it’s not likely to climb out of that porcelain dungeon for decades to come. All because of that pugnacious Irish egotism.

“The same power that burned Hiroshima
Causing three legged babies and death
Shrunk to the size of a nickel
To help him regain his breath

“And I was struck by The Power and The Glory
I was visited by a majestic hymn
Great bolts of lightning lighting up the sky
As the radiation flowed through him”

— Lou Reed

Another Exercise in Mute Nostril Agony

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Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is about miserable, gloomed-out Linda (Byrne), a weary, facially-lined, stressed-out, emotionally and psychologically gutted therapist and struggling mother of a young ailing daughter (heard but unseen until the very end)…

Call her a 40ish woman under siege…anguished to a fare-thee-well and at her absolute wit’s end…a victim of a tortured, infuriating, harrowing, one-urban-indignity-after-another gauntlet that — surprise! — assaults and saps the life force out of the audience as much as Linda if not more so.

Within the first five minutes I was telling myself “you’re not going to last through this whole thing”. But I decided I would tough it out, dammit, for at least an hour. Which I did. It was agony and I was checking my watch every ten minutes, but I made it!

In Jeannette Catsoulis ‘s N.Y Times review (10.9), she calls If I Had Legs “wrenching and at times suffocating”, as well as “a horror movie…a howling maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor”.

There is no humor-spiking at any point in this film, trust me. Zero.

Catsoulis also writes that “some viewers could find the movie’s relentlessness exhausting“.

Famous Steve Martin line in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (‘88), spoken to John Candy: “Do ya think so?”

Foster’s Greatest Scene

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Ben Foster‘s beefy, balding Tanner Howard knows he’s finished, of course, but in his final moments he feels triumphant all the same. Elated even.

Tanner is brought down by Jeff Bridges‘ Marcus Hamilton, a sweaty, drawlin’, pot-bellied Texas Ranger who’s determined to get revenge for the death of his partner, Gil Birmingham‘s Alberto Parker. And it’s almost as if Tanner is ready for the coup de grace.

“Roofman” Is, For Me, A Major Surprise

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“To live outside the law you must be honest” — a line from Bob Dylan‘s “Absolutely Sweet Marie“.

Derek Cianfrance‘s Roofman (Paramount/Miramax, 10.10), which I saw late last night, is much, much better than I expected. It hums with serious heart, tension, anxiety, inner conflict. And if you ask me, Kirsten Dunst is a shoo-in for a Best Actress nomination.

As we speak the woke-theology fanatics critics aren’t being effusive enough about Roofman — it’s only merited an 82% from Rotten Tomatoes and currently has a droopy 64% score from Metacritic. And that’s really wrong…it’s really fucked up to dismiss or semi-dismiss a film as good as this. Fucking assholes.

Plus Roofman‘s first weekend will only pull in $10 million, give or take.

Roofman might nonetheless qualify as a Best Picture contender once the word gets around; ditto Cianfrance for Best Director. Tatum is pretty damn impressive also. It’s that fucking good…seriously.

The first trailer sold a semi-comical, character-driven, fact-flirting caperflick about a lighthearted, small-time thief (Channing Tatum) falling in love with a nice, decent woman (Kirsten Dunst) who eventually finds out, etc.

That trailer shamelessly and sociopathically lied through its fucking teeth.

A more recent trailer [below] was a bit more candid about what kind of film Roofman is, but it still lied because it emphasized the “antsy, anxiety-besieged thief having to lie and pretend and skulk around in order to survive” aspect.

What Roofman is, in fact, is an oddly fascinating and curiously touching love story…actually a kind of suburban schizophrenic love story because Tatum’s Jeffrey Manchester is torn between living the sketchy, dodgy, blade-runner life of a thief while falling into the vibe of being a nice, nurturing, church-attending guy who loves Dunst’s Leigh Wainscott, a mother of two teenage girls who works at a Toys R’ Us in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The film is basically about Tatum’s inability to to be loyal to one or the other and trying to split the difference, and eventually succumbing to the yield of his own indecision.

Pic is generally based on a five-year period in Manchester’s felonious life, which began in ’98 and ended in early ’05 (i.e., between his late 20s and early 30s). But it’s more particularly about the Wainscott period (June ’04 to early ’05).

Roofman isn’t guided as much as punctuated (not defined or propelled but punctuated like a dash or an ellipses or a semi-colon) by Manchester’s thievery, which basically amounted to roof-drilling into a series of McDonalds outlets and grabbing the cash as well as living inside a Toys ‘R’ Us and subsisting on baby food and M&Ms peanut candies.

Manchester’s relationship with Wainscott and her daughters is the heart of the film, as well as the primary, paradoxical reason why he gets popped at the end. (The 54-year-old Manchester is currently in the slam and not due for release until 2036.)

And I’m telling you that Dunst’s performance really brings the honesty, the feeling, the hurt and the do-re-mi. I know what an Oscar-level performance looks, feels and sounds like, and Dunst really brings it.

But you still have to be able to roll with the mystery of Jeffrey Manchester, whom Tatum portrays as a real humdinger of a puzzle…an amiable but hidden, strangely conflicted dude….decent but conniving and gently felonious…unconcerned with the usual social commandments but desiring family ties.

It’s actually not so much the Blonde on Blonde poetry of Dylan as the core philosophy of Neil McCauley that Manchester fails to heed.

McCauley’s view is that living outside the law requires a coldly calculating form of discipline when it comes to significant others, to wit: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”

Alas, Tatum/Manchester isn’t cold or tough enough to adopt the McCauley ethos, and it is this failure from which Roofman‘s story tension and emotionality flows. This is what makes Roofman curiously fascinating. Manchester is obviously some kind of fleet-fingered sociopath, but one who paradoxically manages to con himself into believing that he can find comfort and respite in the straight, conventional, church-adjacent life of Wainscott and her two teenage daughters.

The whole time you’re muttering to yourself, “Listen, asshole…I feel the rapport with Dunst and her daughters like you, and I understand why you want to live in that world while taking part in their churchgoing life and all that, but you fucking can’t because you’re chosen the life of a thief. Haven’t you seen fucking Heat? If you don’t want to get sent back to jail you have to maintain that McCauley discipline, and if you fail to do that you’re toast. Do you get it? Wake up, man!”

Nightmare Scarves

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The dude who designed this ugly-ass, black-white-and-blue Soho scarf (top photo) should be fined if not arrested.

Not to mention the semi-ghoulish return of the “Castro clone” look of the mid to late ‘70s, complete with a rough-and-ready, “Don’t Stop Me Now” Freddie Mercury moustache.

Honest question: Who walks around with a folded scarf hanging out of a jacket’s side pocket? We all recall the colored-handkerchief signage from the leather-bar culture of several decades ago. Is the folded scarf thing a variation of some kind?