4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Oh, Hi!' Review: I'll Make You Love Me
I'm no expert on romance tropes, but I understand there's one that aficionados refer to as 'forced proximity,' in which two characters are unable to escape one another's company and, I presume, wind up falling madly in love. There's something to it: the idea that if someone was just forced to spend enough time in your physical presence, they'd come to see how irresistible you actually are. The appeal is obvious: not only the romance, though that's of course the point, but also the suggestion that you are, in fact, just that alluring.
'Oh, Hi!' is slightly more realistic twist on that setup, plausible but drawing on the same fantasy, albeit with a dose of darkly funny irony. Written and directed by Sophie Brooks, it is the tale of Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman), who are headed upstate for a romantic weekend away. Their rapport is playful and intimate, but slowly we realize this is also a new relationship; they're learning about one another, still trying to impress one another, still unable to keep their hands off one another. They're still figuring each other out, and it's sweet.
It's all very lovely until they decide to get kinky in the bedroom. One of them makes a confession, and things take an unexpected turn. I don't want to spoil what happens next, but I will say that after some panicking, Iris has to call her best friend, Max (the always delightful Geraldine Viswanathan), and Max's boyfriend, Kenny (John Reynolds), for help, and everyone tries to solve the problem they've inadvertently created in ways that only get comically worse.
The first half-hour or so of 'Oh, Hi!' is genuinely charming, mostly because Gordon (who has a story credit on the film) and Lerman seem like they're having a lot of fun with one another: drinking wine, cooking, swimming in the lake and watching fireflies on the back deck. There's a whole subgenre of low-budget independent films shot in houses just north of New York City — usually horror or comedy, or both — and they tend to be lovely to watch, not just because the surroundings are beautiful. Perhaps actors just relax in that setting, or maybe it's the vacation-like location. In any case, I wanted to go rent a car and join them.
But by the midpoint, the plot starts to drag, feeling repetitive. It's sort of baked into the setup: There's a stuckness to the whole premise. This is fundamentally a film about how a relationship built on mismatched expectations is probably never going to work, and about how easy it is to have those mismatched expectations in today's dating landscape. It's not necessarily that some golden age of courtship and monogamy and marriage was better for everyone involved; it's just that introducing casual relationships and situationships and all kinds of relational configurations into the socially acceptable mix means those who don't communicate are pretty much doomed from the start.
That's the gist of the film, and that's where it lands, but it spins its wheels for a while getting there. So to the degree it works — and it does, a lot of the time — it's a testament to its performers, especially Gordon and, once she arrives on the scene, Viswanathan, both of whom bring an energy to the screen that always has a touch of mischief, like they could veer off into lunacy or ecstasy at any time. Give either of them the right script and enough space to play in, and they're just fantastically fun to watch. Gordon, as the film's true protagonist, gets to ripple through her full range, and if by the end we're a little exhausted, she seems like she is, too, in a way that feels cathartic. The course of true love is never, ever going to run smooth.
Oh, Hi!Rated R for sex, kink, nudity and language, plus some possible danger. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.
