Comedy 'Oh, Hi!' is as dysfunctional as the relationship it portrays

A few weeks ago, I turned my phone back on after a movie and saw a text from a critic friend of mine in Los Angeles. He’d been at a screening of this year’s Sundance Film Festival hit “Oh, Hi!” where someone at the studio had sent along the wrong passkey to unlock the digital file, leaving a theater full of impatient press sitting around while a publicist made frantic phone calls trying to get the movie onscreen. This sort of thing used to happen all the time back when the industry first switched over to digital projection, notoriously causing the cancellation of the splashy 2012 New York Film Festival premiere of Brian De Palma’s “Passion.” On my way home, I wrote back to my friend and asked how things had worked out for him.

“Terribly,” he replied. “They fixed it and I had to watch ‘Oh, Hi!’”

The sophomore effort from writer-director Sophie Brooks stars Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as Iris and Isaac, a cute, 20-something couple on their first weekend getaway together in a rented country house upstate. We’re told they’ve been together for four months, yet weirdly seem to be having the kinds of conversations you have on first or second dates. These crazy kids are still very much in the “getting to know you” stage, punctuated by bouts of enthusiastic sex and enough public displays of affection to earn the ire of a nosy neighbor, played by famously humorless alt-comedy legend and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” co-star David Cross.

On the first night, they discover a hidden cache of bondage gear stashed away in one of the closets. After a few too many drinks, the two are soon fooling around with Isaac handcuffed to the headboard. But during their post-coital cuddling, Iris slips up and says the dreaded c-word. No, not that one. She says she’s so happy being part of a couple, which causes her fella to freak out. Apparently, Isaac wasn’t looking for a relationship with this woman he’s been dating for four months and took on a romantic weekend getaway in the country. He thought they were just hanging out, or whatever they’re calling that these days.

It’s always an uncomfortable conversation when two people have to address imbalanced expectations in a relationship. But even more so when one of the participants is naked and still chained to the bed. Isaac doesn’t want to be tied down, yet here he literally is, and Iris isn’t about to let him go. She decides to keep him shackled at least for the next 12 hours, during which time she’ll make a case for why they should be a couple. Isaac agrees to hear her out, because it’s not like he has much of a choice.

This isn’t a bad premise, sort of like a rom-com version of Stephen King’s “Misery,” taking old stereotypes about men’s fears of commitment to logically absurd ends. Gordon and Brooks have said in interviews that they wrote the movie together remotely during the pandemic — the actress shares a “story by” credit with the director — both holed up in their childhood bedrooms recovering from bad breakups. You’d think that a provocative scenario penned by two writers under such emotionally fraught circumstances might dive into some choppy emotional waters, like dating in a social media surveillance state where everyone’s always trying to come off as casually cool and the worst sins one can commit are being “cringey” or “giving the ick.” (This is what I am told, anyway.)

I’m not sure what I was expecting from “Oh, Hi!,” but in my head I was hoping for a two-hander like 2022’s “Sanctuary,” in which Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott took turns getting tied up while exploring the power dynamics of their dysfunctional relationship. Unfortunately, “Oh, Hi!” turns out to be as afraid of commitment as Isaac is, pivoting to sitcom slapstick when Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds show up as Iris’ doofus friends trying to help her figure out what to do with the guy she’s got kidnapped in the bedroom.

Suddenly it’s “9 to 5” without any of the gender politics or crack comic timing, just an implausible hostage situation. Viswanathan mentions that she has a sister who’s a witch, and she could probably give them the recipe for a potion that will wipe Isaac’s memory. Readers, there is nothing in the film’s first 45 minutes suggesting that this movie takes place in a world where witches can make memory-erasing potions. Yet before we know it, the characters are dancing naked in the yard while chanting incantations around a bonfire. I don’t normally slap my forehead in frustration with a film, but this was a special occasion.

As an actress, Gordon has an appealing serenity that felt like an oasis amid the stressed-out shenanigans of 2020’s terrific “Shiva Baby,” and remains a beacon of calm during the ongoing anxiety attacks of TV’s “The Bear.”  But there’s another side of her screen persona as well, and about halfway through “Oh, Hi!” I was rudely reminded why I only made it half an hour into Gordon’s 2023 directorial debut “Theater Camp,” a Sundance prizewinner in which she somehow managed to mug even harder than Ben Platt. The screenplay for “Oh, Hi!” requires Iris and her kooky friends to do so many stupid, bizarre and illogical things, I started wondering exactly how old they were supposed to be. There’s a line between watching young people who are still figuring things out and characters who make you question how they are able to feed and bathe themselves.

I suppose it might not matter as much if any of this was particularly amusing or well-staged. But “Oh, Hi!” is an extreme example of the lackadaisical camera blocking that’s become depressingly trendy in indie films. Instead of the director composing meaningful shots, the cinematographer simply chases the actors around badly lit rooms. (Too many comedies consider the camera a recording device instead of a tool for expression.) Opening so close to such a risky and laceratingly personal film as “Sorry, Baby” — which also screened at the same Sundance — “Oh, Hi!” can’t help but come off as shallow and contemptuously privileged. All this unfunny flailing about just to tell us that guys are afraid of commitment? (They must be saving similarly shattering insights like “ladies enjoy shopping” for the sequel.) Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but the only thing for sure is that these characters are from outer space.

“Oh, Hi!” is now in theaters.