Oh, Hi!: Clever Comedy About Everything That Can Go Wrong on Today's Dating Scene
By Liz Braun
Rating: B
The contemporary love landscape looks a bit rocky. All the intricacies — and absurdities — of creating a modern relationship are on display in Oh, Hi!, a clever comedy with Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as a couple getting to know each other better.
Oh, Hi! is heavy on charm for the first chapter. The lovebirds, Iris (Gordon) and Isaac (Lerman) are en route to a getaway in the countryside for their first weekend trip together. They sing along to Islands In The Stream on the car radio, smooching and enjoying each other’s company. They stop at a farm stand along the road to buy fresh strawberries. It’s a drive-cute.
Well, okay, it’s a little weird how Isaac responds to the farmer’s daughter flirting with him. And why is he such an inept driver? Never mind.
At the farmhouse they’ve rented, the bliss continues. The place is delightful, and there’s lots of sex and swimming and more smooching and dancing in the moonlight. Isaac cooks a delicious dinner.
The conversation turns to first love, heartbreak and childhood. Iris mentions the urge to stab a guy who broke up with her after seven years. Ha, ha!
They find bondage gear locked away in the rental house, and decide to try it out. Tying one another up will no doubt just add to the sexually-charged atmosphere …
What happens next in Oh, Hi! is a cascade of broken communication and chaos, kicked off by Iris’ expectations and Isaac’s willful misinterpretation of the relationship term “exclusive.”
It’s both comical and heartbreaking to witness Iris panic-googling online relationship advice into the night. She decides to make the next 12 hours a make-or-break deal with Isaac and begins to subject him to endless attention, not always in a good way. It’s manic and weird.
Friends (played by Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds) enter the scene and try to help; eventually even witchcraft is employed. Oh, Hi! takes a decidedly odd turn but it’s impossible to lose affection for these characters.
What happens as Oh, Hi! appears to go off the rails is a darkly comic send-up of contemporary dating and relationships, an exaggeration of the pitfalls available in meeting online but living in the real world. How do you determine who the crazy girls and the soft boys are before it’s too late? Relationship goals don’t seem to have changed that much, but everything else has — how to figure it all out?
Life and love are hella messy, something rarely shown in our perfectly-curated Instagram world. Oh, Hi! seems willing to tackle some of it in a comedic fashion. Performances from Gordon and Lerman are the glue here; the storytelling gets a little shambolic in the middle but the film is entertaining. Anyway, the course of true love never did run smooth: discuss.
Oh, Hi!: Directed by Sophie Brooks, written by Sophie Brooks and Molly Gordon. Stars Molly Gordon, Logan Lerman, Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds and David Cross. In theatres across Canada Friday, July 25.