Is This Thing On? (2025)

Alex and Tess separate after many years together and settle into the awkward early phase of coordinating separate lives while raising their two sons, Felix and Jude. Their split proceeds without public acrimony; they divide daily responsibilities and attend school events, but they must also learn to navigate a social orbit that used to be shared. Alex, suddenly short on cash after the separation, arrives at the Olive Tree Café one night and finds he cannot cover the door charge. With no other immediate option, he writes his name on the sign-up sheet for the open mic at the Comedy Cellar and takes the slot.

He begins to perform regularly at the Comedy Cellar, moving from nervous sets to more assured appearances until he becomes a featured act. Onstage he crafts routines about his life changes; offstage he befriends other comics and starts a short-lived romantic relationship with Jill, a fellow stand-up. Their fling is casual and occurs amid late-night shows, after-parties and the informal camaraderie of the comedy scene. Alex keeps doing sets; his material grows sharper and more personal, and audiences respond to his increasingly bitter observations about relationships.

Tess returns to the athletic life she had set aside during their marriage. She resumes training and shows particular interest in coaching; she anticipates an opportunity to contribute to the women's volleyball program at the highest level and pursues the possibility of joining the staff for the 2028 Summer Olympics. While she rebuilds her athletic identity, Tess begins dating Laird. Their relationship progresses into regular outings and shared dinners; Laird supports her coaching ambitions and accompanies her to events when he can.

One evening Laird brings Tess to the Comedy Cellar. That same night Alex is the featured performer. Inside the club Alex finishes a set and leaves amid the post-show bustle. Outside on the sidewalk the two of them confront one another. They speak bluntly about the speed with which each appears to be moving on: Tess and Laird, Alex with Jill. The conversation escalates from accusations into reminiscence; they trade barbed comments about each other's choices and then cut through the anger to admit what they miss. By the time they part ways that night they have reconciled briefly; later that night they have sex.

Following that encounter, Alex and Tess run into their close friends Balls and Christine in social settings. Balls uses the conversation as a confession: Alex's separation prompts him to reexamine his own marriage, and he tells Alex that he has considered separating from Christine. Christine answers with a different confession: she reveals that she has been viewing Alex with a measure of condescension because he reminds her of the person she once was. She admits that watching him falter and change has forced her to question her relationship with Balls and with the version of herself she prefers to present. Their four-way dynamic becomes a quiet recalibration of long-standing bonds.

Tess receives an offer to become the assistant coach for the national women's volleyball team preparing for the upcoming Olympic games. The offer arrives in the form of a phone call and then formal documentation; the position would place her on the staff selected to attend the 2028 Summer Olympics. Tess reacts with excitement about the professional opportunity and with anxiety about what the role will mean for her family life and for custody and scheduling with Felix and Jude. The job offer intensifies tensions at home.

That tension surfaces when Tess learns that Alex has hung a framed photograph of her, depicting her in athletic pose, on the wall of his apartment. Tess confronts Alex about the photo during an argument in which she accuses him of being in love with an idealized image of her rather than with the day-to-day person. Alex, in turn, accuses Tess of abandoning him emotionally while she pursued athletic ambitions; Tess counters that Alex retreated into stagnation and self-pity during their marriage. The pair trade accusations that they did not support one another: Tess says Alex did not have her back in public and in private when she pursued her career; Alex says Tess did not back him up during his low points. Each line of recrimination builds, and neither gives ground until the argument ends without formal resolution.

The day after that argument, Alex channels his anger into a stand-up routine. He takes the stage with material that reads as a bitter rant about relationships, and he uses personal anecdotes and hyperbolic insults to fuel the laughs. His father, Jan, attends the show and sits in the audience. Jan listens quietly through Alex's set; afterward he follows Alex offstage to speak with him. Jan tells his son that the line of thinking Alex is cultivating is dangerous. He argues that two people in a relationship must rub against each other -- that friction and challenge are part of a necessary dynamic -- and warns Alex that retreating into cynicism will not produce the answers Alex seeks. Jan's remarks are blunt and delivered in an unadorned voice; Alex hears them but does not immediately alter his performance style.

Balls comes by Alex's apartment the following morning. He tells Alex that he has discussed his doubts with Christine and that they have talked things through. Balls reports that he and Christine accept confusion in their marriage for the moment and that they are not rushing to a decision; they are choosing to remain together while sorting out what they want. He frames the conversation as clarity through communication rather than as a formal endpoint. His demeanor suggests both relief and continuing uncertainty.

That same morning Alex goes to Tess's door. He arrives in the neighborhood, knocks, and speaks to her face to face. He says plainly that he was not unhappy with the idea of their relationship; he was unhappy during the course of their marriage. He tells her that he wants to share unhappiness with her -- he phrases it as a desire to be unhappy with Tess, to accept the difficulties and the compromises and to remain connected despite them. Tess listens. They stand in the doorway discussing logistics, the boys, and what it might mean to reconsider their level of commitment. Neither makes a definitive promise on the spot, but they reach a tentative understanding to try again in some form.

Later that day Alex and Tess attend a school performance for their sons. Felix and Jude are on stage for a rendition of "Under Pressure," a classroom production. The auditorium fills with parents and caregivers; the boys go through their parts with the informal earnestness of schoolchildren. Alex and Tess sit together in the audience, watching Felix and Jude and exchanging looks. At the conclusion of the performance, amid the bustle of parents collecting children and the sound of applause fading, Alex and Tess lean toward one another and kiss. The kiss functions as a public acknowledgment that they are willing to attempt to work through the unsettled territory between them. The scene closes with Alex and Tess in the school hallway, holding one another briefly before they separate to rejoin the flow of family life, their reconciliation left open-ended but clearly reinitiated.

At the end of "Is This Thing On?", Alex goes to Tess's apartment and tells her he was not unhappy with their marriage itself but unhappy during it, and that he wants to be "unhappy with Tess" rather than without her. They leave together and attend Felix and Jude's school performance of "Under Pressure," where, in the crowd of parents and kids and noise, Alex and Tess kiss, reuniting as a couple while their boys play onstage. Balls and Christine, having talked through their own doubts, decide to stay together and accept their mutual confusion, and the film closes with all four adults present for the performance, with Alex and Tess back together and their family emotionally rejoined.

Now, in a fuller, step‑by‑step telling of the ending:

Scene: Morning after the fight and the photo revelation
Alex wakes up in his apartment after the argument with Tess about the framed volleyball photo of her hanging on his wall. The room is quiet and somewhat cluttered, the remnants of his new stand‑up life scattered around--notes, notebooks, maybe a mic stand in the corner. The photo of Tess as an athlete is still up, visibly central in the room, a sharp reminder of what she said: that it makes it look like he was only in love with an idea of her, not the whole person she became.

Alex's body language is heavy and tired. He moves slowly, still replaying the last conversation in his head. He knows Tess took that image as proof he clung to a younger, idealized version of her. The distance between them feels as real as the physical distance of this small, separate apartment.

Scene: Balls visits Alex
There is a knock at the door. Alex opens it to see Balls, his longtime friend. Balls steps in, carrying the uneasy, restless energy of someone who has been thinking too much. The apartment is modest, a bit disordered, but welcoming enough for a friend to flop down on a couch or chair.

Balls talks first about his own marriage. He tells Alex that, after watching Alex and Tess separate, he had started to consider separating from Christine, too. He admits that Alex's separation had looked to him like a kind of liberation and a model: if Alex could step away from something long‑standing, maybe he could as well. But then he explains that he has talked it through with Christine. Together, they have decided not to split. They are "okay with being confused with each other"--that is the specific way he puts it, indicating that both of them accept that their relationship is messy, uncertain at times, but still something they want to remain in.

As Balls speaks, Alex listens, shoulders a little hunched, absorbing both parts: that he had influenced Balls toward separation, and that Balls and Christine have now chosen to stay and live with their confusion. The conversation is plain and direct. No big speech, no melodrama--just two middle‑aged friends trying to describe their marriages with the vocabulary they have.

Balls' decision to stay with Christine underlines to Alex, without anyone directly saying it, that separation is not always clarity, and that staying, confused and imperfect, is also a choice. When Balls leaves, Alex is left alone with that thought, the framed photo on the wall, and his own unresolved feelings about Tess.

Scene: Alex goes to Tess's door
Cut to the hallway outside Tess's place. It is a familiar building, one that used to mark "home" for Alex as well. Alex walks down the corridor, a little apprehensive but determined. He is not rushing; his pace is measured, like someone who has decided what he needs to say and is now committed to seeing it through.

He stops at Tess's door and knocks. Tess opens it. She stands in the doorway, guarded but not hostile. They have had too many years and too many recent conversations, fights, reconciliations, and near‑reconciliations for this to feel like a stranger's visit. Still, there is tension: they argued about the photo, about how he saw her, about the idea that he might have loved an image instead of the whole, complicated woman she now is.

Alex looks at her and chooses his words carefully. He tells her that he was not unhappy with their relationship, meaning not unhappy with the fact of being married to her. Instead, he says, he was unhappy during their relationship. It is a precise distinction: the structure of "marriage" was not the real problem; the way he was moving through his own life while in it, his state of mind, was.

Then he adds the line that defines his choice: he wants to be unhappy with Tess. He is not promising eternal happiness or pretending their problems are gone. He is saying, very plainly, that if unhappiness is a part of life, he would rather experience it alongside her than apart from her.

Tess listens. The air between them is still tense but softened by his honesty. She hears that he is not idealizing her as the athlete in the photograph anymore; he is effectively saying he accepts the difficult, incomplete reality of both of them, together. There is no dramatic hug at the doorway, but the scene makes it clear she is receptive. She does not shut him out, does not turn away. The next cut confirms what this conversation has opened.

Scene: Arrival at the school performance
We move to the school, where Felix and Jude are about to perform "Under Pressure" with their elementary school band. The location is a typical school auditorium or gym, with a makeshift stage at one end, folding chairs or rows of seats filled with parents, siblings, and teachers. The atmosphere buzzes with pre‑show noise: kids tuning instruments, a teacher giving quiet instructions, parents chatting, phones being checked and readied to record.

Alex and Tess enter together. They are not dramatically announced; they simply appear in the crowd side by side, finding their place among the other parents. This is the first time after the morning conversation that we see them in public, united in a familiar family role: the mother and father showing up to support their children.

Felix and Jude, somewhere backstage or lined up with their classmates, are preparing to play "Under Pressure." The song choice itself mirrors the emotional pressure they have all been under: the kids absorbing the separation, the parents grappling with identity, purpose, and whether to stay or go.

Balls and Christine are also present at the performance. They sit nearby, now a couple that has decided to remain together, even while acknowledging the confusion and ambiguity in their own marriage. Their presence ties together the film's small circle of adults: two couples, both having looked seriously at the possibility of ending things, both now showing up as partners again for a shared community moment.

Scene: The performance of "Under Pressure"
The lights in the auditorium dim slightly, or at least the attention of the crowd shifts forward as the kids take the stage. Felix and Jude stand with their bandmates--child‑sized instruments, music stands, perhaps slightly oversized shirts or school uniforms. They are focused, earnest, maybe a little nervous.

The opening notes of "Under Pressure" begin. The playing is imperfect in the way children's performances usually are--timing a bit off, some notes not fully in tune--but the effort is whole. They have rehearsed this. They know their parts. This is their big moment.

From the audience, Alex and Tess watch. They are seated close enough that their shoulders or arms can make contact if they lean just a little. Around them, other parents raise phones to record, murmur encouragement, or whisper proudly to one another. Balls and Christine also watch, joined now not only by friendship but by their own recent decision to stick together.

The song continues. Felix and Jude are fully engaged in the performance, unaware in this moment of the exact conversation their parents had earlier, but deeply aware, as kids always are, of whether their parents are present, if they are together, if they are watching.

Scene: Alex and Tess kiss
As the performance goes on, the camera--or the narrative focus--returns to Alex and Tess. They look at their sons, then at each other. The earlier words Alex spoke at her door are still hanging between them, but now they are anchored by this shared, ordinary family event. Tess does not see only a man who loved her volleyball poster youth; she sees the father standing next to her, choosing to show up again with her for their boys.

In that crowded school auditorium, Alex and Tess lean in and kiss. It is not a tentative brush, but also not a showy public display. It is a clear, unequivocal sign that they have chosen each other again. The kiss happens amid the sound of children playing "Under Pressure," under the lights trained on the small stage, while the other parents and friends continue to watch the kids. For Alex and Tess, this is a private moment in a public setting, a simple gesture that confirms the reconciliation opened at her apartment door.

Their kiss signals that they are no longer simply "separated but friendly" co‑parents. They have reversed course on the trajectory that seemed to be carrying them definitively into divorce. They are back together as a romantic couple, accepting that happiness will not be pristine or guaranteed, but committing to face whatever comes as partners.

Scene: The fates of the main characters at the end
– Alex: By the end, Alex is reunited with Tess. He remains a stand‑up comic who has used comedy to understand himself and his marriage, but he does not walk away from the relationship. At the school performance, he stands beside Tess, kisses her, and effectively chooses a renewed marriage--accepting that his own unhappiness was not solved by separation and deciding he wants his life, with all its flaws, with her.

– Tess: Tess, who had returned to volleyball and received an offer to be the women's team's assistant coach for the upcoming Olympics, is still moving forward professionally. She has not abandoned her ambitions. At the same time, she accepts Alex back as a partner. She stands with him at the performance and kisses him, showing that she is choosing to continue their shared life while also holding onto the self she reclaimed.

– Felix and Jude: At the end, the boys are onstage performing "Under Pressure" with their school band. Their immediate fate is to complete the performance while both parents watch together from the audience. They are not given a detailed epilogue, but they are clearly shown with both Alex and Tess present, indicating that their family unit is whole again in a new, more self‑aware form.

– Balls: Balls, who had been influenced by Alex's separation to consider leaving Christine, has talked things over with her. By the end, he has decided to remain with Christine, and he describes them as being "okay with being confused with each other." He appears at the school performance with Christine as a still‑intact couple.

– Christine: Christine, who had earlier admitted she looked down on Alex and that his withering state pushed her to reconsider her own marriage, ultimately stays with Balls. After talking through their relationship, she and Balls choose to remain together despite their uncertainties. Her fate at the end is as Balls' partner, present at the school performance, part of the same small community of adults witnessing Alex and Tess reunite.

The movie closes on this shared, everyday event--a children's performance in a school setting--with the adults' choices clarified: Alex and Tess reunited, Balls and Christine still together, and Felix and Jude performing under the eyes of both their parents, who have decided, in different words and ways, to stay.

Is This Thing On? does not have a post-credits scene. The film does contain a brief on-screen text that appears approximately 10 seconds into the credits reading "Inspired by a true story," but there is nothing after that. The credits run for approximately 6 minutes, and you are free to leave once they conclude.

No, "Is This Thing On?" is not family friendly. It is rated R for language throughout, sexual references, and some drug use, and is aimed at adults rather than children.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting elements (kept non‑spoiler):

• Frequent strong language, including repeated uses of harsher profanity in stand‑up routines and arguments.
• Ongoing sexual references in comedy material and conversations, sometimes crude or suggestive rather than merely romantic.
• Depictions of drug use (recreational, not just alcohol), treated in a casual, adult social context.
• Heavy divorce and marital conflict themes, including emotionally raw arguments, sadness, and stress that could be tough for sensitive viewers or children.
• Moments of intense embarrassment and humiliation in early stand‑up performances, which lean into cringe and discomfort.
• Adult discussion of mental and emotional struggles tied to middle age, regret, and relationship breakdown, with a generally serious, sometimes somber tone beneath the comedy.