Directed by Bradley Cooper | Written by Cooper, Will Arnett, and Mark Chappell | 121 min | ▲▲▲1/2

This film had the whiff of Oscar bait — from actor-turned-director Cooper, whose potent first two efforts were lauded with nominations — but this one has been ignored this season. Maybe it’s too intimate, not universal enough, but it’s still a quality work that, like it’s predecessors, is interested in the complex relationship between two people, the love and the sacrifices people make for love.

Here it’s New York finance guy Alex (writer and comic actor, Arnett), who’s split from his wife, Tess (Laura Dern, solid as always). They’ve got friends in common, and two kids. Alex is a wreck. One night in Manhattan he goes for a drink but it’s an open-mic comedy night. In order to get in without paying cover he signs up. He’s got no material, so he just starts talking about his life. It goes over pretty well. It’s like therapy for this guy, the one new thing he’s got that provides some joy and the possibility of community — with actual comedians playing comedians in the clubs, Amy Sedaris, Chloe Radcliffe, and Reggie Conquest.

But this isn’t all about Alex. Tess is looking to get back to the sport she was really good at, volleyball, so starts to coach. She connects with a former colleague (oh, hey Preston Manning) and confabs with pals — their friend group includes Andra Day and Sean Hayes — while she maintains a good relationship with Alex’s parents (Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds).

Cooper takes a plum role as their struggling actor pal, Balls, who gets the lions share of the best lines, and whose chemistry with Arnett is so good through the first two acts you sort of wish this was a New York buddy comedy. Any time those guys are together the movie gets a boost.

It’s something I wished more for throughout — jokes — in this story of a person who discovers he’s good at telling them to people. The first and second acts tilt awkwardly between the melancholy of Alex’s life and the possibilities that come from finding an unexpected talent — being painfully, sometimes hilariously honest in front of people.

And then the movie’s MVP steps up — Dern is fantastic here, and if there was any justice she’d be in the Supporting Actress conversation for her work on this movie. There’s a scene in the middle of the second act when she first sees her ex on stage, and what she’s able to express with her face tells everything about the conflicting emotions she’s dealing with.

From there, the film, to its credit, gets that much more complex. It doesn’t always land those unexpected third-act emotional blows, but as it explores unknown territory in longterm relationships it shows us things we don’t often see in movies — it’s pragmatic, realistic, and even romantic.

Cooper, who also is credited with B-Camera here, could step away from the over-reliance on hand-held. It works well in the comedy club scenes, less so in scenes between Alex and Tess, where the ersatz authenticity the hand-held delivers is often a distraction from the actors’ good work. Still, Is This Thing On? has a heart that shines through, and it’s very much worth seeing while it’s still in cinemas.