{"id":86953,"date":"2025-07-23T21:40:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T21:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/86953\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T21:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T21:40:13","slug":"oh-hi-review-a-dark-comedy-about-the-dark-dating-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/86953\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Oh, Hi!’ review: A dark comedy about the dark dating scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

The modern dating scene<\/a> is not a healthy one. Perhaps it never really was and everyone is nostalgic for something that didn\u2019t exist. But you don\u2019t need to be on the apps to sense the anxiety around. Just open the New York Times Magazine site and scroll through the 1,200 comments on Jean Garnett\u2019s \u201cThe Trouble With Wanting Men,\u201d in which she examines unfulfilled desire and the idea of \u201cheterofatalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

We wonder what happened to the romantic comedy.<\/a> Maybe we\u2019re all to blame. How can we have fun with stories about romance when it is so bleak out there? But thank goodness for the filmmakers who are trying to, if not make sense of it all, talk about it. Celine Song<\/a> did it in her own way with \u201cMaterialists.\u201d<\/a> And now comes Sophie Brooks\u2019 \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d about a new-ish couple on their first weekend away together. These movies are not at all similar, and yet both speak to the current mood in valuable ways.<\/p>\n

In \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d<\/a> Iris (Molly Gordon)<\/a> and Isaac (Logan Lerman)<\/a> seem to be very much in sync as a pair, singing in the car together, laughing about a little accident that results in the purchase of hundreds of strawberries and excitedly exploring the very nice house they\u2019ve rented for this romantic getaway. The chemistry is there: There\u2019s humor, wit, conversation and attraction. They\u2019re even on the same page on more intimate matters. It is a terrific opening \u2014 nothing is really happening, and yet it\u2019s pleasant to just be in the moment with them.<\/p>\n

But then things take a turn. We know they\u2019re headed south from the first frame, when a distraught Iris greets her friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan) at the country home late one night. We\u2019re trained to expect that it\u2019s all leading to a fight, or a breakup. \u201cOh, Hi!,\u201d however, has other things up its sleeve.<\/p>\n

Note to new couples: Best not to define a relationship while one is chained to the bed after a bit of experimentation. Granted, neither thought they needed to have this conversation, but it quickly becomes clear that they both heard things differently. Iris thought they were exclusive. Isaac thought it was perfectly clear that they weren\u2019t and aren\u2019t. But why, Iris asks, are they doing this at all after four months? Why are they on this trip? Why did he make her scallops? It\u2019s enough to make anyone go a little mad, which Iris does, deciding that she\u2019s going to keep Isaac chained up until they talk it through to her satisfaction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a kind of over-the-top, \u201cMisery\u201d-styled meditation on entrenched gender cliches in heterosexual dating. The women are crazy and needy. The men are jerks and aloof. And no amount of rational discussion on either side will end the stalemate. Iris believes that if he just gets to know her a little better, perhaps he\u2019ll change his mind. She goes long on her biography in a funny little sequence, but the monologuing doesn\u2019t help Isaac figure out how to escape. It just goes on.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Hi!\u201d follows this path to extreme ends as Iris involves Max and her boyfriend Kenny (John Reynolds), who are all trying to figure out how to get out of the situation without going to jail. It\u2019s admirable how ardently they commit to making this outlandish premise as realistic as possible.<\/p>\n

The film loses the plot a bit when Max and Kenny get involved and things get extra silly. It might have been better had it stayed with Iris and Isaac to the bitter end. Gordon, who co-wrote the story with Brooks, is a huge reason it works at all. She somehow keeps Iris grounded and relatable throughout, which is no small feat after she makes her big mistake. At times, that epic misstep made me think that \u201cOh, Hi!\u201d might be the female \u201cFriendship.\u201d<\/a> And while Lerman gets substantially less to do, you come out feeling for both characters, trapped in anxieties of their own making and a social structure in which neither romance nor commitment seems to be a priority. At least this film lets us laugh about it a little bit.<\/p>\n

And lest you think people in relationships have it easier, just wait until \u201cTogether\u201d arrives next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Hi!\u201d a Sony Pictures Classics release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for \u201clanguage, sexual content and some nudity.\u201d Running time: 94 minutes. Three stars out of four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The modern dating scene is not a healthy one. Perhaps it never really was and everyone is nostalgic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":86954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2122,7704,1144,171,42166,58526,58527,58524,58525,58522,398,16876,53,58523,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-86953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-arts-and-entertainment","9":"tag-celine-song","10":"tag-comedy","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film-reviews","13":"tag-geraldine-viswanathan","14":"tag-jean-garnett","15":"tag-john-reynolds","16":"tag-lindsey-bahr","17":"tag-logan-lerman","18":"tag-media","19":"tag-meditation","20":"tag-movies","21":"tag-sophie-brooks","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114904722696659087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}