People love to complain about Bradley Cooper as both director and actor: He’s too ambitious, too thirsty for an Oscar. His movies strive for what’s often viewed as a rather boring sort of classiness. He wore a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein. The litany goes on, but you could argue that Cooper fills a niche few other filmmakers these days even consider. He wants to make adult movies that concern the things people care about, subjects that used to draw grown-up audiences to movie theaters. It might be a reimagining of a classic story, like A Star Is Born, or a nuanced biopic of a gifted, divisive figure like Maestro's Bernstein. Or it could just be a story about the way love can slip through your grasp despite your best efforts—or, worse, because you didn’t make the effort—like the modest but affecting comedy-drama Is This Thing On? However you feel about Cooper, he keeps making movies few others would bother to attempt, doing the work of being a grownup in a world where grownups have all but abandoned the movies.

Is This Thing On? begins with an ending. Will Arnett stars as Alex, who, as we learn in the movie’s opening scene, is splitting with his wife of more 20 years, Laura Dern’s Tess. The couple has two 10-year-old sons—not actual twins but Irish ones, as Alex will later point out—which only makes the split harder. Still, it seems necessary. Tess seems to be going through the motions of being kind to her husband, but when they’re spending time with friends, she can’t help flashing the occasional sharp glance. But at least she’s got some vitality. Alex just seems sapped and zonked, as if he can’t believe what’s happening but has neither the will nor the energy to stop it. You can see why Tess—whom we later learn is a onetime star athlete, a volleyball champ—might want to be free of this cardboard cutout of a man.

Laura Dern and Andra Day Searchlight Pictures

After a particularly trying evening, Alex puts Tess on the train to the couple’s huge suburban home outside New York City and wanders by a small bar on the way to his own rented city apartment. It looks inviting; there’s life inside. He thinks he’ll stop in for a drink. The bouncer stops him at the door and demands a $15 cover, unless he’s participating in the evening’s open-mic comedy event. Alex doesn’t feel like paying the cover—he claims he doesn’t even have the money—so he signs up to go onstage instead.