Of all the Hollywood mainstays not named Tom Cruise, Bradley Cooper is perhaps the most fun to psychoanalyze. After snagging a slew of bit parts throughout the early aughts, the actor fully rose to prominence in the decade’s latter half as a frat boy heel in Wedding Crashers, He’s Just Not That Into You, and The Hangovers. All those comedies seemed to indicate a clear career trajectory going forward, but then the clip of him on Inside the Actors Studio started making the rounds. Wild-eyed and overeager, the then 24-year-old was merely an audience member, but his passion for craft and dramaturgy oozed from his pores. Star parts in Limitless, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Sniper clearly weren’t enough to satisfy all that hunger, his attention finally shifting to the other side of the camera in 2018 with his remake of A Star is Born. What should he find in the center of his frame but himself, giving perhaps his finest performance to date in a part that blurred the line between fact and fiction. Jackson Maine might strike the retinas as a pure Eddie Vedder analogue, but his alcoholism flew too close to Cooper’s own stated struggles with addiction to pass without comment, as did the desire to be a golden god on the biggest stage imaginable.

His sophomore effort, Maestro, arrived five years later, and despite earning a second consecutive Best Picture nomination, most audiences were more keen on looking behind the curtain than at the screen. Perhaps they were just following the director’s cues; while ostensibly a Leonard Bernstein biopic, the recurring subjects of creative genius, masculine failures, and withering under the spotlight had an autobiographical aftertaste, a reading that’s almost certainly been brought to Cooper’s attention. Rather than reloading for another award’s season opus, the thespian-turned-filmmaker decided to dial things back, unwittingly following the same treasured trajectories of his heroes. The filmographies of Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, and Robert Redford are as filled with zigs as they are zags, and while Is This Thing On? constitutes a much smaller bite of the aspirational apple than either of its antecedents, it’s wholly in keeping with an established path to cinematic glory.

At least he’s willing to give up headlining duties this time around, though plugging Will Arnett into the starring role keeps his streak of working through personal issues on film alive and well. Once the male half of a Tinseltown power couple, the Arrested Development star fathered two boys with Amy Poehler before filing for divorce in 2014, the same number of bright young lads produced by the union of Alex (Arnett) and Tess Novak (Laura Dern) in Cooper’s latest. You can probably read between the lines as to the state of their marriage in Is This Thing On?, though only those who’ve caught the trailer would be able to predict Alex’s sudden affinity for stand-up comedy. Having stumbled into an open mic performance on a lonely night in Manhattan, Alex takes to M.C. duties like a fish to water, lighting a spark in the man that had long been dormant. Tess’ journey, which will be attended to later, follows a similar roadmap, prompting a couple on the precipice of a break-up to reconsider themselves and their family.

Viewing everything under the sun through a metatextual lens can lead to some interpretive dead ends, but Cooper is once again forcing our hand, pulling from Arnett’s true-life story while styling him in an easily recognizable likeness. That’d be Cooper himself, who’s lending his floppy head of hair and ideal five o’clock to his real-life best friend in an act that splits the difference between generosity and myopia. You almost can’t tell the two apart, turning the scenes that they share together into a middle-aged white man’s version of the Spider-Man meme, with all the enjoyable self-effacement that the description implies. It helps that Cooper is clearly having a blast as Alex’s eccentric, curiously-named college buddy Balls, renouncing his self-assigned responsibilities as a centrifugal force, and ending up with the movie’s best character anyway. Again, the mind drifts to the calculations being made off stage.

Alex isn’t a dud pursey, but he might have the least to do of any protagonist throughout all of last year’s filmic slate. Not to make light of divorce, but in a venue that’s so often occupied by falling skyscrapers and soaring beasts, the dissolution of a union and the accruement of hobbies represent some glaringly low stakes. On? seems allergic to anything earth-shattering, presenting their split as amicable, Alex’s comedy as a lark that could never break big, and the pair’s shared financials as casually enviable. A sequence right at the film’s center, which threatens to expose Alex’s clandestine new gig and features the most inspired bit of stunt casting in many moons, may have you straightening up in your seat, but it’s really the exception that proves the rule. When so little is on the line, the passages with some measure of friction rise instinctively to the fore.

All searches for meaningful tension again recede to the production process, wherein the industry prominence of both Arnett and Dern comes under the microscope. Widely beloved but far from bankable, neither has been blessed with this much screen time in a single project for eons, and Cooper is hellbent on arguing in their favor to the point of distraction. The timeline here is messy indeed, with the quinquagenarians chasing around a pair of ten-year-olds while Tess grieves the loss of a Volleyball career that presumably ended decades ago. Their lacking chemistry also makes for an odd-duck duo, but when appraised individually, all those complaints fall by the wayside. Any opportunity to see Arnett and Dern get more shots up than they’re usually allotted should be cherished, regardless of the miscasting, and even if the two don’t exactly lift each other up, there’s charisma to spare on a solitary level.

Perhaps they should have shared some with the flick’s legion of comedians, none of whom are capable of prompting a single chuckle during On?’s elongated two hour runtime. Neither is Arnett for that matter, but before we jump on Cooper for his inability to effectively port stand up onto the big screen, it’s worth mentioning his forbearer’s similar failures. Funny People, Punch Line, and The Big Sick all have their champions, but even they would tell you that the genuine knee-slappers are few and far between, again marking Cooper as part of a wider celluloid lineage. Even his relative misses match up perfectly with the mishaps of the legends before him, with Is This Thing On? clearly angling for the burgeoning cult status that eventually came to define the supposedly lesser works of innumerable name brand directors. Giving his characters virtually anything to fight for or against would have helped in that endeavor, and those immune to Arnett and Dern’s charms, as well as adherents to separate-the-art-from-the-artist mindset, will find little to hold their attention. This one is for the sickos who will never meet Bradley Cooper, but are convinced they know him like the back of their hand.