Oh Hi! quietly landed in theaters amid a blazing summer of superhero movies and blockbusters, so you’d be forgiven if you didn’t realize it was out. Starring Logan Lerman and Molly Gordon, it’s a small-budget romantic comedy that attempts to showcase what happens when our worst features clash with one another in relationship. It’s also a solidly fun time at the theater.
Oh Hi! Review
Oh Hi! succeeds in the silly. It’s an absurd scenario, but one that’s quietly very plausible. A slightly mentally unstable person put in the same scenario might act just like that. And the friends who get involved would probably also go to the lengths they did, except most normal people probably wouldn’t resort to attempting witchcraft.
It’s all pleasantly funny, too. It’s not laugh out loud except for a few occasions thanks to a criminally underutilized David Cross. His comedic timing is fantastic, and the scenes he’s in are easily the funniest. A special shoutout also goes to John Reynolds, whose sincerity and naivete work really well here.
The cinematography is pretty good, but it certainly helps that they’re largely filming at a beautiful home at an idyllic creek. The score is fine, though it really fails to truly stand out. Most often, you don’t realize there’s any music going on at all, which is not ideal, but it’s worse than sticking out like a sore thumb.
The script is maybe where Oh Hi! shines. Penned by lead actress Molly Gordon and director Sophie Brooks, it all comes together in a really solid way. Character arcs are present and fully realized. Small narrative choices pay off most of the time. Everything wraps up in a way that is pleasantly satisfying. There aren’t any loose threads, either.
The only problem with the script is that each and every character in the movie acts as stupid as they possibly can. Logan Lerman’s character has zero survival instinct, and Gordon’s character has a hard time thinking things through. Lerman is also mostly used as eye candy here; he’s shirtless for probably 75% of the movie.
There’s enough comedy to keep you in a good mood while watching it and there’s only a small amount of eye-roll moments, most of which come at the very beginning of the movie where Lerman and Gordon are pretty cringey. Once the ball really gets going and these characters reveal their true selves to the audience, it’s much more enjoyable.
There are also some slight subversions of expectations that work. You might think Lerman is going to be the bad guy for a little bit before things switch, and there are other times where familiar tropes would’ve gone one way, and Oh Hi! goes the other.
There’s some surface-level exploration of relationship dynamics and how one’s own personal trauma can really make things difficult. It’s a pretty on-the-nose depiction of what a relationship can be like when people are in denial of or don’t know what their key character flaw is.
Lerman is afraid of commitment because of what happened with his parents, and Gordon is desperate for commitment because her boyfriend of seven years dumped her out of the blue. Until they reckon with those flaws, they can’t find any sort of common ground.
Conclusion
Oh Hi! is a brisk one hour and 35 minutes, so it really doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s probably going to go widely unnoticed because it’s up against the likes of Superman, Eddington, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and Together with Dave Franco and Brie Larson is coming this week. Still, it’s not a bad way to spend an hour and a half in the theater.
Score: 3/5
