Chris Knipp
07-25-2025, 05:29 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20ohi.jpg
LOGAN LERMAN AND MOLLY GORDON IN OH, HI!
SOPHIE BROOKS: OH, HI! (2025)
Be nice when you're wearing handcuffs
Iris and Isaac (Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman, both excellent) have been seeing each other for four months. Now for the first time they are going for a whole weekend in the country, to a pastoral retreat called High Falls. People do say "Oh, hi!" but it's not clear where it fits in; many critics quip "Oh, no!" and one can easily see why. This movie doesn't ultimately work at all, though it's exciting at first.
In the prelude, we're charmed; or are the actors charming each other? Both, and especially Lerman. Chemistry is good. The first twenty minutes, as Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says, are the best, before the trouble happens (spoiler alert). First, we're riding in the front seat for a singalong, "Islands In The Stream" by the Gibbs as performed on the radio by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and rehearsed by our stars. There is not much foreplay: cunnilingus within the first seven munites, after crashing into a roadside strawberry vender whose attractive female attendant has flirted with Isaac. Or has he flirted with her? Again, both. The rental is by a lake. Isaac prepares a romantic dinner of scallops with wine.
Given the great, playful chemistry, it's believable that when the handsomely accoutred country house Iris and Isaac have rented for the weekend turns out to have a closet full of BDSM sex toys, they're game. Even after a couple shots she can't bear being the one tied up, but Isaac agrees. Then, afer great sex, they get into a discussion of the relationship, very unwise, and he, even more uwise, admits he is not being monagamous; that in fact he's not keen on hitchig up with anyone. Leather handcuffs are locked to the four-poster bed on both his wrists and his ankles. Sophie refuses to unlock Isaac while she thinks this over. It seems she wants to come up with a way to make him agree to go steady over the next twelve hours. Maybe releasing him from bondage would help. The dragging out of the situation graduallly leads into farce with a painfully awkward edge of horror.
Doubtless Sophie Brooks is familiar, as a lot of us are, with Rob Reiner's Stephen King adaptation Misery, but things don't go on that long, or maintain as consistent a logic. There is excitement and suspense about what's going to happen. Is Iris flat-out crazy, or just intense? It is pointed out by Isaac anyway that what she is doing qualifies as a felony, because it's kidnapping. But there is too much implausibility. Why does Iris call in her friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), who brngs her boyfriend Kenny (John Reynolds)? At least Kenny is a sort of ally for Isaac. But then again, he isn't.
How much can you sympathize with somebody completely crazy and stupid? Clearly Isaac isn't wise about how he behaves when he's essentially a prisoner, because hours later he says something else provocative. But what can you say to somebody who's being unhinged and has you tied up? Exactly when this becomes implausible may vary for you, but a clear dividing line comes when a witch is brought in and the ladies start to think a spell has worked to make the victim forget what has been done to him over the past 24 hours. And then, more unnecessary events happen, and the couple say more implausible things, and this film, though short, begins to seem long.
And yet, Mick LaSalle may be right that this is a movie that does all the wrong things, yet still works. But not enough to make it a movie you can save, or recommend, beyond current fare. A big plus is the acting of Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman, and this is a good-looking film. A big minus for some of us is how much this is a Sundance movie, particularly the kind that thinks it's a good idea to use a song at every key point to tell us what to think. But that's something that, as a writer, director Sophie Brooks hardly seems to know herself.
Oh, Hi!, 94 mins., premiered at Sundance Jan. 26, 2025, showing also at Miami, Tribeca, Prinincetown, Nantucket, Maine, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (is it because Lerman and Gordon are Jewish). It opens widely in US theaters by Sony Pictures Classics July 25, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/oh-hi!/) rating: 5̶9̶%̶. Now 62%.
LOGAN LERMAN AND MOLLY GORDON IN OH, HI!
SOPHIE BROOKS: OH, HI! (2025)
Be nice when you're wearing handcuffs
Iris and Isaac (Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman, both excellent) have been seeing each other for four months. Now for the first time they are going for a whole weekend in the country, to a pastoral retreat called High Falls. People do say "Oh, hi!" but it's not clear where it fits in; many critics quip "Oh, no!" and one can easily see why. This movie doesn't ultimately work at all, though it's exciting at first.
In the prelude, we're charmed; or are the actors charming each other? Both, and especially Lerman. Chemistry is good. The first twenty minutes, as Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says, are the best, before the trouble happens (spoiler alert). First, we're riding in the front seat for a singalong, "Islands In The Stream" by the Gibbs as performed on the radio by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and rehearsed by our stars. There is not much foreplay: cunnilingus within the first seven munites, after crashing into a roadside strawberry vender whose attractive female attendant has flirted with Isaac. Or has he flirted with her? Again, both. The rental is by a lake. Isaac prepares a romantic dinner of scallops with wine.
Given the great, playful chemistry, it's believable that when the handsomely accoutred country house Iris and Isaac have rented for the weekend turns out to have a closet full of BDSM sex toys, they're game. Even after a couple shots she can't bear being the one tied up, but Isaac agrees. Then, afer great sex, they get into a discussion of the relationship, very unwise, and he, even more uwise, admits he is not being monagamous; that in fact he's not keen on hitchig up with anyone. Leather handcuffs are locked to the four-poster bed on both his wrists and his ankles. Sophie refuses to unlock Isaac while she thinks this over. It seems she wants to come up with a way to make him agree to go steady over the next twelve hours. Maybe releasing him from bondage would help. The dragging out of the situation graduallly leads into farce with a painfully awkward edge of horror.
Doubtless Sophie Brooks is familiar, as a lot of us are, with Rob Reiner's Stephen King adaptation Misery, but things don't go on that long, or maintain as consistent a logic. There is excitement and suspense about what's going to happen. Is Iris flat-out crazy, or just intense? It is pointed out by Isaac anyway that what she is doing qualifies as a felony, because it's kidnapping. But there is too much implausibility. Why does Iris call in her friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), who brngs her boyfriend Kenny (John Reynolds)? At least Kenny is a sort of ally for Isaac. But then again, he isn't.
How much can you sympathize with somebody completely crazy and stupid? Clearly Isaac isn't wise about how he behaves when he's essentially a prisoner, because hours later he says something else provocative. But what can you say to somebody who's being unhinged and has you tied up? Exactly when this becomes implausible may vary for you, but a clear dividing line comes when a witch is brought in and the ladies start to think a spell has worked to make the victim forget what has been done to him over the past 24 hours. And then, more unnecessary events happen, and the couple say more implausible things, and this film, though short, begins to seem long.
And yet, Mick LaSalle may be right that this is a movie that does all the wrong things, yet still works. But not enough to make it a movie you can save, or recommend, beyond current fare. A big plus is the acting of Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman, and this is a good-looking film. A big minus for some of us is how much this is a Sundance movie, particularly the kind that thinks it's a good idea to use a song at every key point to tell us what to think. But that's something that, as a writer, director Sophie Brooks hardly seems to know herself.
Oh, Hi!, 94 mins., premiered at Sundance Jan. 26, 2025, showing also at Miami, Tribeca, Prinincetown, Nantucket, Maine, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (is it because Lerman and Gordon are Jewish). It opens widely in US theaters by Sony Pictures Classics July 25, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/oh-hi!/) rating: 5̶9̶%̶. Now 62%.