I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

My thoughts on Oh, Hi!

Oh, Hi!, the new film from writer-director Sophie Brooks, is a film that never really “works” as they say. In theory, this is not exactly news because you could say the same thing about a significant percentage of the films playing in your local multiplex on any given weekend. What is mystifying in this case is that the opening scenes hold a certain degree of promise, the cast includes two of the most interesting up-and-coming actresses working today and it still doesn’t work. Even though it may be rather small in scale and budget in comparison to most of the blockbusters out now, it ranks right up with the least of them in terms of the sheer amount of wasted talent and promise on display throughout.

During the opening scenes, we see a young couple—Iris (Molly Gordon, who also conceived the story with Brooks) and Isaac (Logan Lerman)—heading off to spend a weekend by themselves at a remote cabin. What we see of them is so idealized that it almost resembles the kind of visuals one normally associates with commercials for erectile dysfunction medication—they go shopping for strawberries, swim in a nearby lake and enjoy a romantic meal of perfectly prepared scallops and wine. And yet, while it looks like the ideal romantic getaway for a couple who are clearly into each other, there are a couple of indications that something is slightly askew about the situation. Although the visuals suggest that they have been together for at least a few months, the conversation that they share is the kind of get-to-know-you patter (“So, what is your favorite movie?”) that is usually taken care of in the first couple of dates. There is nothing overtly wrong, I suppose, but there is just something a bit off between them.

While exploring the cabin earlier in the day, the two comes across a locked closet containing bondage gear and that evening, they decide to use it to get a little kinky as Iris handcuffs Isaac to the bed as a prelude to a bit of fun. That goes well enough but afterwards, the weekend begins to go sideways when Isaac finds himself compelled to admit that he is not really looking to get involved in a long-term relationship with anyone at this time. This is news to Iris, who does not take it very well because she was under the impression that the entire weekend was meant to suggest that they actually were going on to the next level. Upset, she refuses to unlock the cuffs, promising to let him go if she is unable to convince him that they are meant to be together after 12 hours. What happens from this point, I leave for you to discover except to note that Iris eventually calls in her bestie, Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), who arrives with her boyfriend, Kenny (John Reynolds), to help her figure things out, though they only end up making things even more complicated in the process.

As I said, the opening scenes (with one exception that I will get to momentarily) are promising enough as the subtle sense of unease accompanying the ostensibly romantic visuals certainly suggest that something interesting is going to happen. (In a number of ways, they are reminiscent of the early scenes seen in the even-wilder Companion earlier this year.) The problem is that once the narrative makes its big shift as Isaac reveals his disinterest in a long-term relationship, the film basically grinds to a halt as it plunges into what is essentially a slightly more benign version of Misery with the Kathy Bates character being replace with the kind of character for which noted pop culture observer Nathan Rabin (in)famously coined the descriptor “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”—one with all sorts of pronounced and theoretically adorable eccentricities who seem to exist only to reawaken their disillusioned male targets to the possibilities of romance. Skewering that particular trope in this way is not necessarily a bad idea, I suppose—though perhaps a bit on the dated side—but the screenplay never comes close to going to the dark extremes such an approach would require. Instead, we get a series of tedious conversations that render both the characters and the situations increasingly implausible as it goes on.

The screenplay is messy in other ways as well. At one point later in the proceedings, Iris and Max look to witchcraft as a way of getting out of their current predicament and that entire section does little other than to make the two of them come across as goofballs. Brooks also demonstrates an increasingly irritating tendency to offer up crashingly obvious hints to the various twists and turns to come that only serve to lessen their impact when they are finally deployed. The most glaring and inexplicable comes right at the beginning as the film starts off with a flash-forward to the arrival of Max and Kenny and Iris’s admission to them that she has done something bad to Isaac. Because of this, we know right from the get-go that something is going to go very wrong and as a result, what should have been a big jolt when the narrative makes its shift from apparent rom-com to something a little more sinister doesn’t really come off as well as it might have if it had been left as a surprise.

The only real surprise that Oh, Hi! has to offer is the general squandering of the talents of both Molly Gordon and Geraldine Viswanathan in roles that completely fail to make use of their gifts. You know Gordon from such things as Booksmart, Shiva Baby, Theater Camp and her recurring role on The Bear and Viswanathan from the likes of Blockers, Miracle Workers and last year’s criminally underseen Drive-Away Dolls. Both of them are loaded with the combination of charisma and talent, especially in regard to comedic roles, that usually ensures that any film that either of them happen to be in will perk up whenever they appear on the screen. And yet, the only tension that really develops in the film comes from trying to figure which of the two will be wasted more. On the one hand, Gordon is somewhat miscast in a role that calls for much bigger emotional swings than her usual dryly low-key manner—her Iris seems too smart and together to have ever connected with Issac on any level, let alone stooping to the levels that she does in an effort to win his heart. On the other, Viswanathan seems to be playing the comedic best pal but is never given a single funny thing to say or do throughout and her character just feels more like a narrative contrivance than anything else. Both of these actresses have been fantastic in the past and will no doubt continue to be fantastic in the future but my guess is that when they eventually receive their Lifetime Achievement awards, you won’t be seeing very much of this film in their highlight reels.

Again, what makes Oh, Hi! so frustrating is not the fact that it is a bad movie—though it is—but the fact that it is one that contains a number of ingredients that could have easily led to a good movie and somehow manages to mishandle and render them both dramatically and comedic ally inert. The pieces are there but it lacks the vision to transform them into the kind of penetrating and darkly funny look at contemporary relationships that it clearly wants to be—it feels like a Neil Labute concept that went through any number of rewrites by others inn an increasingly doomed effort to make it more palatable. The whole thing proves to be an extended exercise in audience frustration but, unlike the characters, you are at least free to leave whenever you want.