Laura Dern

IS THIS THING ON?: uncoiling the bewilderment of a break-up

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Photo caption: Will Arnett in IS THIS THING ON? Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

In the romantic dramedy Is This Thing On?, Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess (Laura Dern) are suburban New Yorkers heading for an amicable divorce. They’ve been together for 26 years, married for 23, and have a pair of precocious and adorable ten-year-old sons, but the passion in the relationship has petered out. Alex, who works in finance, has become a hangdog, passively accepting household assignments from Tess. Tess, a former Olympic athlete, runs the family, but she’s suffering from some undefined deficit. They like each other, and their lives are objectively comfortable, but each is miserable, so Alex takes a tiny apartment in Manhattan.

Despairing and confused, Alex is at loose ends when, on a whim, he gets on stage at a comedy club’s open mic night. He talks about his bewilderment to an audience, and finds it gratifying. Soon, he is spending every night doing stand-up, continuing to process his feelings, and actually getting proficient at comedy. Alex has found a new passion, and it’s stand-up comedy.

Tess is finding that the mere absence of Will isn’t making her feel better either, and decides to re-enter the world of sports as a coach. When Tess finally learns about Alex’s new pursuit, the two can finally start figuring out what has been keeping them from happiness.

Laura Dern and Will Arnett in IS THIS THING ON? Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

This is a mostly funny and unusually thoughtful rom com. Arnett and the director, Bradley Cooper, co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Chapell.

Both Will Arnett and Laura Dern are exceptional as the talented and privileged Alex and Tess, who founder as a couple and as singles. Bradley Cooper is very funny as Alex’s extremely shallow actor friend.

The way that Tess finds out about Alex’s stand-up comedy is contrived, as important plot points in any rom com tend to be, but I was distracted by the actor involved, who is very, very famous for non-acting. Jeezus, that’s Peyton Manning! Manning is actually good, but his sudden appearance took me out of the movie for a bit.

The Wife, on the other hand, walked out at that point. She had previously been distracted by the lack of economic consequences to the split of the one-income family into two households.

Nevertheless, I liked Is This Thing On?, which is as funny and redemptive as most rom coms, and smarter than most of them. Is This Thing On? is included with Hulu and rentable on Amazon and AppleTV.

DVD/Stream of the Week: WILD

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Reese Witherspoon in WILD
Reese Witherspoon in WILD

Based on the popular memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild is the story of how Strayed dealt with her own emotional collapse. Suffering  from the death of her mother, among other issues, Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) had become a red-hot mess, playing around with heroin and destructive serial sex and, in the process, dooming her marriage to a solid guy (Tomas Sadoski from The Newsroom). To cleanse herself from her demons, Strayed embarked on a solitary thousand mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

Hiking the Pacific Coast Trail is a mighty quest – both an ordeal and an achievement. But walking it alone as a woman – that’s a whole different deal. The camera is on Reese Witherspoon in every scene, and she carries the movie with her performance – both as Cheryl implodes in the flashbacks and as she overcomes her fears and inexperience on her hike. It’s been eight years since Witherspoon won the Oscar for Walk the Line. Recently, she’s been reinventing her career with high quality fare like Mud, Devil’s Knot, Wild and the upcoming Inherent Vice. Her work in Wild is top rate.

Laura Dern’s performance may be even better than Witherspoon’s. She plays Strayed’s mom, a woman who has been dealt a shit sandwich every day of her life, but who relentlessly insists on appreciating life’s small pleasures. It’s a compelling and heartbreaking performance.

Now I have done some back country hiking and I know what it’s like to walk for 15 miles in a day. It can be pretty damn monotonous. But not this movie. Writer Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and director Jean-Marc Vallée do a fine job in presenting the scope of a thousand mile journey by pulling out the most compelling components – the moments that illustrate the impressiveness of the feat and the depths of Strayed’s emotional damage and healing.

It’s pretty fine piece of filmmaking overall, and I’m going to start looking for the work of Jean-Marc Vallée. As he did in Dallas Buyers Club, here he tees up extraordinary performances while avoiding what could have become trite and sentimental audience manipulation. Watching Witherspoon and Dern in Wild is a good use of anyone’s time.

Wild is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixter.

WILD: a quest against her own demons

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Reese Witherspoon in WILD
Reese Witherspoon in WILD

Based on the popular memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild is the story of how Strayed dealt with her own emotional collapse.   Suffering emotionally from the death of her mother, among other issues, Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) had become a red-hot mess, playing around with heroin and destructive serial sex and, in the process, dooming her marriage to a solid guy (Tomas Sadoski from The Newsroom).   To cleanse herself from her demons, Strayed embarked on a solitary thousand mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

Hiking the Pacific Coast Trail is a mighty quest – both an ordeal and an achievement. But walking it alone as a woman – that’s a whole different deal. The camera is on Reese Witherspoon in every scene, and she carries the movie with her performance – both as Cheryl implodes in the flashbacks and as she overcomes her fears and inexperience on her hike. It’s been eight years since Witherspoon won the Oscar for Walk the Line.  Recently, she’s been reinventing her career with high quality fare like Mud, Devil’s Knot, Wild and the upcoming Inherent Vice.  Her work in Wild is top rate.

Laura Dern’s performance may be even better than Witherspoon’s. She plays Strayed’s mom, a woman who has been dealt a shit sandwich every day of her life, but who relentlessly insists on appreciating life’s small pleasures. It’s a compelling and heartbreaking performance.

Now I have done some back country hiking and I know what it’s like to walk for 15 miles in a day.  It can be pretty damn monotonous.  But not this movie.  Writer Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and director Jean-Marc Vallée do a fine job in presenting the scope of a thousand mile journey by pulling out the most compelling components – the moments that illustrate the impressiveness of the feat and the depths of Strayed’s emotional damage and healing.

It’s pretty fine piece of filmmaking overall, and I’m going to start looking for the work of Jean-Marc Vallée.  As he did in Dallas Buyers Club, here he tees up extraordinary performances while avoiding what could have become trite and sentimental audience manipulation.  Watching Witherspoon and Dern in Wild is a good use of anyone’s time.