{"id":33998,"date":"2025-07-24T15:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/33998\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:21:14","slug":"comedy-oh-hi-is-as-dysfunctional-as-the-relationship-it-portrays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/33998\/","title":{"rendered":"Comedy ‘Oh, Hi!’ is as dysfunctional as the relationship it portrays"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I turned my phone back on after a movie and saw a text from a critic friend of mine in Los Angeles. He\u2019d been at a screening of this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival hit \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d where someone at the studio had sent along the wrong passkey to unlock the digital file, leaving a theater full of impatient press sitting around while a publicist made frantic phone calls trying to get the movie onscreen. This sort of thing used to happen all the time back when the industry first switched over to digital projection, notoriously causing the cancellation<\/a> of the splashy 2012 New York Film Festival premiere of Brian De Palma\u2019s \u201cPassion.\u201d On my way home, I wrote back to my friend and asked how things had worked out for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerribly,\u201d he replied. \u201cThey fixed it and I had to watch \u2018Oh, Hi!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The sophomore effort from writer-director Sophie Brooks stars Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as Iris and Isaac, a cute, 20-something couple on their first weekend getaway together in a rented country house upstate. We\u2019re told they\u2019ve been together for four months, yet weirdly seem to be having the kinds of conversations you have on first or second dates. These crazy kids are still very much in the \u201cgetting to know you\u201d stage, punctuated by bouts of enthusiastic sex and enough public displays of affection to earn the ire of a nosy neighbor, played by famously humorless alt-comedy legend and \u201cAlvin and the Chipmunks\u201d co-star David Cross.<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Cross in “Oh, Hi!” (Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)<\/p>\n

On the first night, they discover a hidden cache of bondage gear stashed away in one of the closets. After a few too many drinks, the two are soon fooling around with Isaac handcuffed to the headboard. But during their post-coital cuddling, Iris slips up and says the dreaded c-word. No, not that one. She says she\u2019s so happy being part of a couple, which causes her fella to freak out. Apparently, Isaac wasn\u2019t looking for a relationship with this woman he\u2019s been dating for four months and took on a romantic weekend getaway in the country. He thought they were just hanging out, or whatever they\u2019re calling that these days.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always an uncomfortable conversation when two people have to address imbalanced expectations in a relationship. But even more so when one of the participants is naked and still chained to the bed. Isaac doesn\u2019t want to be tied down, yet here he literally is, and Iris isn\u2019t about to let him go. She decides to keep him shackled at least for the next 12 hours, during which time she\u2019ll make a case for why they should be a couple. Isaac agrees to hear her out, because it\u2019s not like he has much of a choice.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a bad premise, sort of like a rom-com version of Stephen King\u2019s \u201cMisery,\u201d taking old stereotypes about men\u2019s fears of commitment to logically absurd ends. Gordon and Brooks have said in interviews that they wrote the movie together remotely during the pandemic \u2014 the actress shares a \u201cstory by\u201d credit with the director \u2014 both holed up in their childhood bedrooms recovering from bad breakups. You\u2019d think that a provocative scenario penned by two writers under such emotionally fraught circumstances might dive into some choppy emotional waters, like dating in a social media surveillance state where everyone\u2019s always trying to come off as casually cool and the worst sins one can commit are being \u201ccringey\u201d or \u201cgiving the ick.\u201d (This is what I am told, anyway.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what I was expecting from \u201cOh, Hi!,\u201d but in my head I was hoping for a two-hander like 2022\u2019s \u201cSanctuary<\/a>,\u201d in which Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott took turns getting tied up while exploring the power dynamics of their dysfunctional relationship. Unfortunately, \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d turns out to be as afraid of commitment as Isaac is, pivoting to sitcom slapstick when Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds show up as Iris\u2019 doofus friends trying to help her figure out what to do with the guy she\u2019s got kidnapped in the bedroom.<\/p>\n

\"FromFrom left, Geraldine Viswanathan and Molly Gordon in “Oh, Hi!” (Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)<\/p>\n

Suddenly it\u2019s \u201c9 to 5\u201d without any of the gender politics or crack comic timing, just an implausible hostage situation. Viswanathan mentions that she has a sister who\u2019s a witch, and she could probably give them the recipe for a potion that will wipe Isaac\u2019s memory. Readers, there is nothing in the film\u2019s first 45 minutes suggesting that this movie takes place in a world where witches can make memory-erasing potions. Yet before we know it, the characters are dancing naked in the yard while chanting incantations around a bonfire. I don\u2019t normally slap my forehead in frustration with a film, but this was a special occasion.<\/p>\n

As an actress, Gordon has an appealing serenity that felt like an oasis amid the stressed-out shenanigans of 2020\u2019s terrific \u201cShiva Baby,\u201d and remains a beacon of calm during the ongoing anxiety attacks of TV\u2019s \u201cThe Bear.\u201d\u00a0 But there\u2019s another side of her screen persona as well, and about halfway through \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d I was rudely reminded why I only made it half an hour into Gordon\u2019s 2023 directorial debut \u201cTheater Camp,\u201d a Sundance prizewinner in which she somehow managed to mug even harder than Ben Platt. The screenplay for \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d requires Iris and her kooky friends to do so many stupid, bizarre and illogical things, I started wondering exactly how old they were supposed to be. There\u2019s a line between watching young people who are still figuring things out and characters who make you question how they are able to feed and bathe themselves.<\/p>\n

I suppose it might not matter as much if any of this was particularly amusing or well-staged. But \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d is an extreme example of the lackadaisical camera blocking that\u2019s become depressingly trendy in indie films. Instead of the director composing meaningful shots, the cinematographer simply chases the actors around badly lit rooms. (Too many comedies consider the camera a recording device instead of a tool for expression.) Opening so close to such a risky and laceratingly personal film as \u201cSorry, Baby<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which also screened at the same Sundance \u2014 \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d can\u2019t help but come off as shallow and contemptuously privileged. All this unfunny flailing about just to tell us that guys are afraid of commitment? (They must be saving similarly shattering insights like \u201cladies enjoy shopping\u201d for the sequel.) Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but the only thing for sure is that these characters are from outer space.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Hi!\u201d is now in theaters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few weeks ago, I turned my phone back on after a movie and saw a text from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-33998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}