Oh, Hi!

“I did a thing,” confesses Molly Gordon’s Iris, the sympathetic if somewhat unhinged protagonist of Oh, Hi!, a familiar, convoluted rom-com that escalates into bad-sitcom level absurdity. When Iris and Isaac (Logan Lerman) escape to a picturesque farmhouse—singing the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream” in the car like an old married couple—their weekend trip brings some details about their relationship status to light. The “thing” she admits to over the phone, speaking to her best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), is that she has chained Isaac to the headboard and refuses to release him. It started as playful bondage and good sex, until he remarked that he didn’t consider them boyfriend-girlfriend. “I’m not really looking for a relationship,” he says, after four months of dating. And so, Iris has resolved to leave him there, hoping that he might come around after twelve hours or so.  

This twisted look at modern dating from writer-director Sophie Brooks is the kind of insufferable movie where, if the characters just had a quick conversation to clarify their feelings, they could have avoided everything that follows. But then, of course, there wouldn’t be a movie—meaning Oh, Hi! exists to perpetuate itself. Brooks lays out a scenario reminiscent of the underseen Serious Moonlight (2009), written by Adrienne Shelly, in which a scorned wife (Meg Ryan) ties up her unfaithful husband (Timothy Hutton) to win him back. Working from an idea conceived with Gordon, Brooks delivers a movie that blends Gerald’s Game (2017) with a dash of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) in a late-movie mind erasure subplot. Promising though the initial setup may be, the movie unravels in the second half, relying too heavily on sarcasm and deadpan humor for such wacky circumstances. This leaves random ideas, such as a detour into witchcraft, to feel out of place. 

While it’s refreshing that Oh, Hi! sidesteps the usual formulas for something darker and weirder, the characters seem to be stand-ins for generationalist stereotypes. Isaac is a typically emotionally available man who would rather be a “fuckboy” than commit. However, Brooks never quite reveals why he seems so emotionally intelligent, yet also shallow, other than reducing him to a millennial trope. Gordon plays a comic foil inspired by characters in Elaine May’s A New Leaf (1971) or The Heartbreak Kid (1972), portraying Iris as sweet but a tad too eccentric and eager to be in a meaningful relationship. Iris’ friends (Viswanathan, John Reynolds) soon arrive at the farmhouse, if only to point out the stakes and the impossibility of the situation. And despite the talented cast, the script and tone feel unbalanced, while the characters are often downright annoying, but not in ways that support the movie’s humor or its commentary on relationships.