It often feels like modern dating is meant to make us insane.
Despite the expediency and ease with which we communicate today, we still risk being misunderstood, our intentions misconstrued, and our signals perilously mixed. And that’s the most generous reading. It’s also possible that our prospective partners, or even our committed ones, are simply assholes who either refuse to understand the pain of those mixed signals or make a big fun day out of leading people by the nose until they get bored.
In Oh, Hi!, Iris (Molly Gordon) finds her nose being squeezed and tugged on by her boyfriend of four months, Isaac (Logan Lerman). The ostensibly happy couple embarks on a getaway weekend upstate, where they can eat an absurd amount of fresh-picked strawberries (after accidentally destroying a woman’s roadside fruit stand) and have sex everywhere in their farmhouse Airbnb. (It’s a medical condition that they both cheekily suffer from.)
After one of these randy encounters involving some handily available bondage toys in the bedroom closet, Iris remarks how easy it was to take a weekend trip with her boyfriend. Isaac is immediately confused: he didn’t think they were a couple. He thought they were “having fun,” and he isn’t interested in a relationship. Iris is blindsided, and after listening to some whiskey-infused bad advice overnight, she decides to “convince” Isaac, over 12 hours, to reconsider their relationship.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, keeping your situationship chained to a bed and trying to “convince” him to stay with you is a felony crime. And so, Iris and Isaac’s weekend getaway becomes a rapidly escalating debacle, Misery by way of frantic, drunken Googling about how to get your not-quite boyfriend back.
Sophie Brooks has a blast with her debacle. She dedicates Oh, Hi!’s first stretch to endearing us to Iris and Isaac, immediately establishing how well-suited they appear to be, from their shared love of “Islands in the Stream” to their sarcastic, irreverent shorthand. On the back of Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman’s chemistry alone, they are a riot to watch.
However, Brooks does offer glimmers of conflict that may seem pretty innocuous on their own but do build to Iris’s Kathy Bates moment. When she shares, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not, that her first heartbreak led to her wanting to stab her boyfriend, you see Isaac getting at least a little bit of the ick. When she asks about his heartbreak, he hedges, hinting that he isn’t as emotionally available as Iris is.
Even with those hints, the chaos of Oh, Hi!’s about-face into psychological horror-comedy lands. It works because Brooks imbues the film with self-awareness that Iris’s downward spiral is insane, ridiculous, and beyond the realm of possibility. While we do understand where Iris is coming from, the film isn’t afraid to portray her as completely unhinged.
That balance makes for some hilarious sight gags and sequences, like Iris helping Isaac urinate into a bowl and her performing an interpretive dance from a childhood recital. Isaac is given the same consideration, foregrounding his undeniable reality as a kidnapping victim while also demonstrating behavior that explains why Iris would end up snapping. Is Isaac wrong for trying to lull Iris into a false sense of security by playing her “12 hours in paradise” game? Not at all, but we understand how that would further push her beyond the bounds of common sense.
On balance, common sense isn’t especially relevant in Oh, Hi! Every decision made in the film is deluded. Even the introduction of Iris’s best friend, Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), and Max’s boyfriend Kenny (John Reynolds) stops the delusion. There’s no real path forward for any of them not to be considered criminals. However, the escalating stakes are thoroughly entertaining and keep us laughing well into the third act.
A certain level of suspension of belief is required, though. Iris and Max, who seem like semi-reasonable adults, end up practicing naked witchcraft in the backyard in a last-ditch effort to find their way out of this mess. Again, what helps it go down relatively easily is Brooks’s lack of self-seriousness about their actions. No one truly believes that a potion made from random forest materials would help them escape prison, but it sure is fun to see.
It’s a big ask to close out such an absurd premise successfully, and Oh, Hi! struggles as Isaac and Iris’s weekend from hell concludes. Brooks tries for a resolution that acknowledges their mutual issues and tries to let them, especially Iris, off the hook. Even with suspended disbelief, the final act feels too tidy for a film featuring a nighttime seance. Brooks’s attempt to have her cake and eat it too does zap some comedic energy and momentum, but not so much that it negates what came before.
It certainly helps that she has Gordon and Lerman in her corner. They form a dynamite pair, with sparkling chemistry that powers every scenario that Brooks thrusts upon them. Gordon is an undeniable star, approaching Iris’s mania and vulnerability with a take-no-prisoners gusto. Meanwhile, Lerman proves that he should lead more romance films, especially with his wildly expressive eyes.
For all the criminal antics, witchcraft, strawberries, and Dolly Parton needle drops, Oh, Hi! succeeds as an extreme tale about how bonkers dating can make us. It’s not a new or surprising insight, but it doesn’t need to be. Most people can surely relate to either giving or receiving mixed signals. What might be new is how audiences might think twice before sending them out.
Leave a Reply