OH, HI! Review
- stewworldorder
- Dec 14
- 4 min read
Every so often, I am reminded of how little I care for director Todd Phillips.
I've written on this before, but it's something I come back to every now and again. If I were to look it up, I would see that Phillips' exact quote was "Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture... There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’”
The problem with this is, of course, that comedy is perfectly alive in the 2010's-2020's and the Woke Culture era. Stand-up sets still sell well. Comedy in pop culture is still highly prevalent, even if straight comedy movies aren't particularly en vogue in recent years. But you have regular fantastic outings like Game Night or Schitt's Creek or Brooklyn-99 or The Good Place or Guardians of the Galaxy or... look, do I need to keep going?
All it really takes is not being as lazy as Todd Phillips is.
ANYWAY, the point of all of this is that I recently found another little known comedy on a streaming service (Netflix this time) that I watched and knew I had to write a review on when I was done. Today's offering is called Oh, Hi!, and it was a movie I decided to watch based entirely on the snippet that Netflix showed while I was spooling through the options.
The premise of the movie is centered around a young couple still in the relatively early throes of their relationship going on a vacation together. The first act establishes that Isaac and Iris are adorable and comfortable together. They buy strawberries, take a swim, read some books, and generally seem perfect as a couple.
Their first night of the trip together sees them find BDSM gear in the AirBNB rental, which they use to tie down Isaac for sex. In the post-coitus glow, Isaac lets slip that he doesn't imagine the two of them as being in a monogamous relationship. A shaken Iris decides to leave Isaac chained up for the night.
The next morning, she comes to a decision: she will leave Isaac subdued so the pair can spend twelve hours together and re-assess their status. Isaac agrees because... what choice does he have?
As the day winds down, will he acquiesce to her desires? Or will she realize what she is doing and set him free?
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ Oh, Hi! is genuinely funny in its continued absurdity. I laughed throughout at the various goings on, and things just kept getting weirder and weirder. Every so often in the final two acts, you think things have gone as far as they can, but then… they go further. And it just works.
I appreciate any good pure comedies we get in this era when so few are still
getting made. Not because of the reasons that losers like Phillips think, but just because comedy has been relegated to a secondary genre affixed to others. So we still get a lot of Horror-Comedy or Action-Comedy, but precious few straight Comedies.
Either way, Oh, Hi! is a genuine 2025 comedy outing that really brings the laughs with its crazy plot and whacky antics. It's a blast.
+ The cast all really commits to the premise and does their best to sell everything. Everyone does a solid job making the movie a smooth and easy watch. The leads are played by Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman, who are obviously the stars of the show, but Geraldine Viswanathan, David Cross, and John Reynolds round out the core grouping as the supporting characters. And the three of them are all up to the task of helping carry the picture.
I've been a fan of Viswanathan and Cross for years at this point, but everyone else was really a revelation here. The way Gordon shifts gears as Iris shows great nuanced talent. She goes from doe-eyed as a romantic lead to off-her-hinges so seamlessly. And Reynolds plays a great friend of the couple who is torn between what to do in the situation in which everyone finds themselves. He may be the highlight of the movie.
- A lot of the movie hinges on Isaac being a complete putz and not thinking of the most basic things to do to save himself. Even when he has plenty of time to do so. It’s hard to sympathize with him when he could pretty easily solve his own problems if he would quit being a fool.
There are several moments during Oh, Hi! that you are all but screaming at the television for this character to make the obvious sensible choice, but he refuses to do so. I don't know about you, but moments like that can really take me out of a film, even if I'm otherwise enjoying it.
- The movie ultimately writes itself into a corner with all of its shenanigans and outlandishness, and the ending isn’t particularly satisfying. I am not sure how you would end this flick really, and maybe director and co-writer Sophie Brooks did the best she could, but it doesn’t feel like the best possible conclusion. I could see a lot of people coming away displeased with the resolution.
Oh, Hi! is easily one of my most pleasant surprises of 2025. It was something I watched on a whim, and I came away from it with a smile on my face, even with the lackluster climax. I really did spend a fair chunk of the flick laughing away at my TV and at these up-and-coming actors making abject craziness look like so much fun.