There’s a period in every relationship you might call the “supernova” phase — when everything is fresh and new, the attraction and lust burn blindingly bright, and you can’t get enough of each other. The couple at the center of Oh, Hi! are a textbook example of this Paleolithic period of romance: Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) are four months into what seems like a giddy love connection. They’re going on their first trip together, spending a weekend in a house in upstate New York. It’s still early enough in their coupledom that every other conversation doubles as a fact-finding mission. How big a reader are you? Do you like whisky? What do you mean, you’ve never seen Casablanca?!
Anybody can tell these two really like each other, and not just because they have sex approximately 0.0004 seconds after they get to their quaint rural rental. They have such an obvious rapport, and even though they’ve only been seeing each other for a relatively short time, there’s an ease to the way they talk to each other. Iris is already earmarking parts of their getaway for future anecdotes, perfect for sharing in their autumn years together. Hey, honey, do you remember that time we accidentally knocked over that woman’s table of fresh strawberries, then you cooked me scallops later and we found that closet full of S&M bondage gear? Oh, we were so young then, that was so long ago….
Right, the chains and leather straps. So Iris and Isaac do indeed stumble across a number of items that suggest the owners of this place like more than a little kink in their lives. The two decide to take advantage of this discovery, and Isaac soon finds himself fulfilling the “sub” half of a Dom/Sub dynamic. Iris makes a post-coital comment about how easy it all feels, this whole “taking our first trip together as a couple” thing. The mood immediately shifts. Isaac isn’t exactly cool with the word “couple.” I mean, that sounds like there’s some sort of commitment involved here, or that they’re, like, exclusive or something!
We’d like to offer some unsolicited advice to anyone who finds themselves in this exact situation, i.e. you’ve just had intense intercourse while being consensually restrained and are suddenly forced to admit you’re in a boyfriend-girlfriend type of deal: Even if you’re handsome, dumb-ass millennial dude, do not say this to your partner at that exact moment. Like, for real. Because if you do, you’re about to become part of an impromptu, not-so-consensual couple’s therapy session that will go off the rails at least a half dozen times.
Part pie-eyed rom-com and part pitch-black comedy, Oh, Hi! — the title itself is an in-joke between the two young lovers — basks in the glow of a genre that specializes in selling happily-ever-after fantasies, then takes a perverse glee in throwing buckets of cold water on your expectations. Writer-director Sophie Brooks (The Boy Downstairs) knows how to replicate the rhythms of a traditional, destination-vacation romantic comedy, all the better to drop the floor out from under you. Best known for playing whatever the opposite of a manic pixie dream girl is on The Bear, Gordon is particularly good at giving you someone who takes the idea of desperate times requiring desperate measures, and maybe a manic episode or two, to extremes. Somewhere around the halfway point, the cavalry is called in, which translates as John Reynolds doing a variation on his nebbishy hipster from Search Party and Geraldine Viswanathan doing what she does best, i.e. injecting an extra 10ccs of life into every single scene she’s in.
(Seriously, let’s take a second to appreciate Viswanathan, who’s slowly become one of the best comic actors working today while still remaining relatively under the radar. The young, Australian performer’s turn in 2018’s Blockers gave her raunch-com bona fides, her work in the underrated 2019 dramedy Hala is top-notch, and the way she sells a father-daughter double act with Will Ferrell in this year’s You’re Cordially Invited virtually saves that silly wedding farce from falling apart at the seams. Taking on a second-banana role here that would have given Eve Arden or Thelma Ritter pause, Viswanathan knows when to drop in a WTF-is-happening reaction shot, a supportive nod or a notch-it-up nudge into a goofier realm, especially once she begins vigorously pitching witchcraft as the solution to her friend’s problems. May she never, ever want for work.)
We’re front-loading the positives here. This attempt to turn true-love clichés on their head is also not nearly as subversive as it thinks it is, and we’re unsure whether Iris is supposed to be a send-up of the unfortunate crazy-in-love-but-mostly-crazy female stereotype or just another version of it. Worse, we’re not entirely convinced Brooks and Gordon know, either. The movie strains to hit a screwball pace once it’s established that Isaac won’t be getting out of his shackles any time soon, and it more or less limps through its last act even when things ramp up. There’s a whiff of self-satisfaction hovering over the proceedings, as if it was the only film that’s ever tried to sell a cockeyed version of modern romance with a bit of sex, violence, to-die-for woodsy real estate and exponentially bad decisions. It isn’t, and to be honest, it doesn’t. No one would consider Oh, Hi! a failure. But you’ll be tempted to say byyyyyeeeeee more than once before this couple’s final bow.
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