The trailers to “Is This Thing On?” had me hyped to catch it during its awards season run.

Will Arnett, one of the funniest actors to hold a SAG card, playing a midlife crisis character who copes by trying his hand at stand up? A movie directed by and also-starring Bradley Cooper? Oscar winner Laura Dern as the wife our would-be stand-up is letting get away?

But you could guess why the film instantly vanished from “For your consideration” the moment its brief and limited theatrical run (which led to me missing it in theaters). The “tell” was in the stand-up scenes sampled in the trailers. And the dead give away is the title, that old stand-up’s line about a joke or comic bit that flopped, blaming the sound system.

“Is this thing on?”

Arnett was never a stand-up comic. Nor was Cooper. And these two co-wrote the script (With Mark Chappell coming in to, we guess, “joke it up?”).

Almost nothing in the many stand-up scenes that show our angsty hero, Alex Novack (Arnett) trotting out his and his wife’s (Dern) marital woes, failings and the like plays as funny. Cutting to eager and growing crowds’ laughter at this material is a lie. Watching Alex rise from “open mike” sessions to paid gigs with set after set staggering through awkward pauses, confessions and the like is not a viable or realistic rising career arc.

And that mutes the impact of everything else in the film — the couple struggling to break up or make up, the advice from comic veterans (Amy Sedaris, Chloe Radcliffe, James Tom, Reggie Conquest), the “straying,” the dopey actor bestie (Cooper) finally getting a big break on a Western series and the caring parents (Ciaran Hinds, Christine Ebersole) who blame their son for letting Ms. Right get away.

More’s the pity, as Cooper manages to wring a lot of sensitivity and “feels” out of this family dynamic — a drifting, “lost” husband and father struggling to find himself, his place in the marriage and his standing with wife and their kids, somebody who could use a little therapy and decides airing his failings on late late night comedy club stages.

That sweet streak helps but never prevents the narrative from becoming an unwieldy jumble as Alex talks on stage about sleeping with other women and his wife is meant to be tempted by a longtime client, inexplicably played by footballer/pitch-man Peyton Manning.

At some point, Alex’s wife and his dad finally get around to checking out his set. Which is revealing, but never ever “funny.”

Cooper’s not a bad director. But this material and this milieu evade him. All that research he did into Leonard Bernstein and he couldn’t glean more from his stand-up visits than this? Maybe watch Seinfeld’s brilliant documentary about the work and the fragile, brittle and defensive people who struggle to do it, “Comedian?”

Arnett’s funny. No doubt about it. But he needs material to work with, and “Is This Thing On?” doesn’t deliver it.

Rating: R, drug use, sexual references, lots and lots of profanity

Cast: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Bradley Cooper, Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Christine Ebersole, Peyton Manning and Ciaran Hinds.

Credits: Directed by Bradley Cooper, scripted by Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett and Mark Chappell.

Running time: 2:01