‘Oh Hi’ - Review

Oh, Hi! 

You’ve been seeing someone for a few months, and you’re going away for the weekend together on a romantic trip to the country. The rustic house you’ve rented on Airbnb is the perfect setting for your escape. A late spring breeze wafts through the open windows. Your partner prepares a delicious, fancy dinner for the both of you. You get a little wine drunk and dance under fairy lights strung up between the trees out back. Later that night, as you engage in the kinkiest sex you’ve ever had, your significant other drops an atom bomb that threatens the entire trip and potentially your relationship. Through her new situationship comedy, Oh, Hi!, writer-director Sophie Brooks seeks to explore the nuances of modern dating, indicting millennials and Gen Z for contributing to a dating culture that is making everyone crazy.

Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) seem to be the perfect couple. As they drive through the picturesque countryside of High Falls, New York, they sing along to a Dolly Parton and Kenny Loggins duet. They have similar senses of humor, the chemistry between them is almost palpable. They’re perfectly aligned. The two stop at a strawberry stand on the way, and Isaac entertains some very blatant flirting from the stand owner. It’s a playful moment that lays seeds of doubt for what’s to come. That night after a fancy seafood dinner, the two sit and ask getting to know you questions, which feels weird considering they’re on a trip together: shouldn’t they have this part out of the way by now?

Everything seems to be going fine until one point when Isaac ends up in a compromised position during some S&M play. The two pick this time to discuss where they are as a couple. Isaac sees them as just two people having fun, but Iris swears they talked about being exclusive. Brooks says that modern dating has created “newer ways and reasons that women can be called crazy and men can be called assholes.” As their argument boils over, with Isaac seemingly gaslighting Iris, he makes an ill-fated move by telling Iris to “calm down –” two words every woman loves to hear – and Brooks turns Isaac into a contemporary Paul Sheldon, leaving him in a Misery-esque situation: he’ll be tied to the bed for 12 hours while Iris comes up with a plan to make him actually want to be with her.

After dating for four months, like Iris, anyone would think perhaps they’re in a serious relationship. Anyone except Isaac, who doesn’t want a relationship because he doesn’t want to get hurt the way his parents hurt each other. It’s a huge reveal in a moment of true vulnerability for him, in every sense. Isaac is a textbook “soft boy:” he wants all of the benefits of a relationship, but none of the responsibility that comes with it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a bit of fun, but this is the issue with modern dating culture: people have lost their minds!

These days, it’s rare for people to meet naturally: most often, one’s dating life is facilitated by one of many apps. Dating apps like Tinder and Hinge have taken the dating pool, which was once limited to your local produce aisle or Barnes & Noble, and essentially opened the entire world up to anyone who makes a profile. Having so many options makes it hard to want to get to know anyone; it feels like maybe the person you’ve been chatting to for a week isn’t Mister or Miss Right, and the next swipe will be. Like Isaac at the strawberry stand, not on the app, but still swiping in real life. The apps have gamified dating and the culture has become unruly with people making up their own approaches and philosophies. They have ulterior motives and hidden intentions, which you wouldn’t find out about until it’s too late. What happened to being upfront and honest? It’s enough to drive anyone to Iris’ lengths! 

Sophie Brooks’ screenplay, which is based on her own dating experiences, boils the horrors of modern dating down into a two hour anti-romantic comedy. Molly Gordon – who co-wrote with Brooks – has had supporting roles in comedies like Booksmart, Shiva Baby and Theater Camp, shines here as Iris. She endears herself to the audience as the woman scorned, as we’ve all been there. You can’t help but feel bad for her as she’s embodying the hurt of not actually being aligned with the person you’re dating. However, at the same time, you’re screaming at her in your head to let Isaac go! Her performance has a frenetic energy and you can never quite tell what her next move will be. Logan Lerman has a fantastic turn as soft boy, emotional baggage-carrying Isaac. Lerman’s boy-next-door looks and the confidence with which he plays Isaac betray the insecurity and deceit buried underneath a character that represents the worst of dating culture.

It would be easy to paint Isaac as the villain of this story, but the narrative refuses to unfold that way. This comes down to the lack of communication between the couple. Isaac carries baggage of his parents’ infidelities; Iris is a hopeless romantic. While Gordon and Lerman have fantastic on screen chemistry, their characters are worlds apart in terms of their dating intentions – even though Isaac performed cunnilingus during the day, which Iris interprets in her mind as some “boyfriend shit”, because what guy is going down on his girlfriend in broad daylight? To him, it’s just part of the fun he’s looking for. There’s also much blame to place on Iris for the continued escalation of the situation. The camera loves to linger on both actors’ faces; Gordon’s big, brown eyes often express more than words can. And Lerman, due to his role, will often have to rely on his eyes to get the words across that he otherwise isn’t able to say. 

In supporting roles, Geraldine Viswanathan who was recently seen in Thunderbolts, and John Reynolds (Search Party, Yellowjackets) star as Iris’ friends Max and Kenny, respectively, who get roped into helping Iris try to avoid potential kidnapping charges. These two have a great dynamic and bring some much needed levity to the situation. Through the trio, Brooks personifies how breakdowns in communication drive us to extremes, as they articulate plans from bludgeoning Isaac to giving him a roofie in order to make him forget. It would be very easy for this film to go too far – and it nearly does – when Viswanathan and Reynolds are added to the mix. It’s a hilarious example of how our friends feed into our dating craziness. They recognize that we’re being insane, but they don’t want to come off as unsupportive. “Yes, girl, text him for a third time even though he hasn’t responded in a month!” 

While the screenplay’s exploration of modern dating culture issues will most likely not start a healing process, it is at least highlighting how important clear communication is between couples. Beyond that, it calls out modern dating culture and how toxic it can be. Hopefully it’s something you think about long after you leave the theater. Yes, the movie is a comedy, but below the laughs are real pain. From soft boys to ghosting, we are complicit in the bastardization of dating. With the advent of dating apps, we’ve forgotten how to truly communicate and it’s driving us to the brink of madness.