Oh, hi!: What happens when a Rom-Com misery meets
Molly Gordon plays Iris and Logan Lerman is Isaac in romantic comedy ‘Oh, hello!’Sony Pictures Classics
Oh, hi!
Directed by Sophie Brooks
Written by Sophie Brooks, Molly Gordon
With the leading role Molly Gordon, Logan Lerman
Classification R; 93 minutes
Oh, hi! is what could actually happen if your approach to true love with is tinted with Mass.
After four perfect months, Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) go to a milestone of a relationship and flee the big city to spend a romantic weekend in a rented farm in the state of New York.
It is clear that they are cute. They are happy. Isaac cooks Sint -Jakobschelpen. Their chatter is healthy, their sex life is fun. The two look like a photo spread of a J. crew catalog at its peak: beautiful and confused and not detached by mosquitoes at night. This is what it looks like when you have found your soulmate.
Posted as a romantic comedy, oh, hi! is less nora ephron than I think you should leaveSony Pictures Classics
At least that is what Iris thinks.
Isaac chooses the worst possible time and informs her that they are not exclusive. He doesn’t want a relationship, and until that moment he didn’t think they were serious. Iris, deeply sad, responds as someone would do if they would visit Annie Wilkes’ school.
She keeps Isaac trapped in an attempt to convince him that he is actually in love.
Positioned as a romantic comedy, Oh, hi! Is less Nora Ephron than I think you should leave. Bizarre and disturbed, his characters are chaotic, narcissistic and deep unwell. In fact, they are both frightening: Iris is what happens when you apply fictional large ‘romantic’ gestures to real situations, and Isaac apparently looks in the ethos of a weeknd song.
Yet the film still works. Directed by Sophie Brooks and co-written by Gordon, it undermines both the ROM-Com and the horrores to produce an original story that transfers predictability. Gordon is sharp, funny and just enough brings humanity to Iris that you feel sorry for her broken heart and terrible judgment – even though you desperately hope that you will never meet her in real life.
David Cross plays Steve in the film, which undermines both the ROM-Com- and the Horroreses to produce an original story.Sony Pictures Classics
It also helps that she is helped by Comedy Gold: Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds appear just in time to add lightness and new perspectives to a starting point that can easily grow old. Especially since Lerman plays an Everyman whose only personality ‘is completely perfect, until not’.
Is there anything credible? Recognizable? Does it have to be? Barely a characteristic film, Oh, hi! Is a testimony of what happens when we pour creative energy into original storylines instead of the dark abyss of the reboot culture. By combining romance and horror tropics, Brooks and Gordon emphasize the ridiculousness that each defines and the toxicity that is used by the classics. (There is more than one Casablanca Call-out involved.) The story is not ambitious and his characters are usually irreparable, but it exposes the bizarre nature of most ROM-Com plot devices by connecting to the most common: two characters who suck.
Oh, hi! Is the last love story that you want to quote when writing your own, and Iris and Isaac are the last people with whom you would ever want to spend a weekend away. But for 90 minutes in a cinema? Their company will at least keep your attention.
