★★★ (3 out of 4)
Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman are out to charm you into suspending disbelief in “Oh, Hi!” a twisted romcom opening in limited release on July 25. It’s not quite a younger version of Stephen King’s “Misery.” Or maybe it is since Lerman, 33, ends up chained to a bed—like James Caan in the film version—and at the mercy of Gordon, 29, the scary role that won an Oscar for Kathy Bates. You be the judge. The movie can’t seem to make up its mind, though it has wicked fun trying.
Gordon, so good as Claire-Bear in “The Bear,” opposite rumored boyfriend Jeremy Allen White, has a story credit in “Oh, Hi!” with director Sophie Brooks. It was their idea to start with the chains part and flash back 33 hours to the happier times when Iris and Isaac—that’s their names—arrive at a picturesque Airbnb farmhouse in upstate New York in full, flirty heat. They even duet to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s cheeseball classic “Islands in the Stream” on the car ride over. (“We can ride it together, ah ha/making love with each other, ah ha”). Ah ha, indeed.
Let me say for the record that the chemistry between Gordon and Lerman is off the charts, each turned on by every cute little thing the other does.
The stage would be set for an old-school Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romp for their first sexy time weekend as a couple. But are they a couple? Isaac doesn’t thing so, at least not yet. That causes a ripple of “Fatal Attraction” anger in Iris that cuts to the heart of the film’s perceptively funny and slightly frightening look at modern dating habits and the confusion that comes with them. As Iris’s mother (Polly Draper) phones in: “Sometimes men don’t know what’s best for them.”
At the farm, Isaac and Iris seem very into handcuff bondage games and then, well, one of them is not. Iris refuses to unlock Isaac until he agrees to talk about why they are not a couple.
And until Isaac does talk, Iris refuses to unlock him. A dozen hours later, he is still not convinced. Even though it’s midnight, Iris calls in help from her best friend Max (the ever-sassy and wonderful Geraldine Viswanathan) who shows up with her boyfriend Kenny (John Reynolds). As time elapses, the light dawns that there is one word to describe what Iris has done. It’s called kidnapping. It’s here that “Oh, Hi!” turns into “Oh, God, what have I done” and a psychological thriller that dropped enough hints so we’d see it coming.
'Oh, Hi!' stays with you and in a world of formula films that evaporate on sight, that's saying something."
It’s here that the tone of the movie veers clumsily from slapstick to felony endangerment. The silliness hits maximum overdrive when Iris and Max cook up a witch's memory erasure formula, which Isaac actually drinks. A nude scene somehow gets mixed up with the farce and the fright, followed by Isaac waking up in the morning as if nothing has happened,
Are you buying this? I didn’t either. Lerman, best known for the heroics of “Percy Jackson,” nails what Max calls “a classic softboy—they trick you, they get you—they’re the worst.” But Gordon, one of the best of her generation (see her movie “Theater Camp,” please), slides back and forth on the spinning wheel of a script that can’t quite decide if Iris is a psycho or a living, breathing moral lesson. “Oh, Hi!” is too provoking to dismiss for its evident flaws. Its stays with you and in a world of formula films that evaporate on sight, that’s saying something.