Latest news with #Hi!'
Mint
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
'I cant keep a secret': Molly Gordon recalls how she shared The Bear spoilers with Logan Lerman
Washington DC [US], July 28 (ANI): Actress Molly Gordon, who is known for working in 'Life of the Party', 'Good Boys', and recently 'Oh, Hi!', shared that she revealed the details about Christopher Storer's TV series 'The Bear''s latest season to her co-star Logan Lerman, reported People. Both Gordon and Lerman starred together in the romantic comedy film 'Oh, Hi!', directed by Sophie Brooks and co-written with Molly Gordon. "I shot my stuff for 'The Bear' before we shot this movie, which is crazy, because we shot it about a year ago," she said. Lerman said, "You told me a little bit," Gordon responded, "Yeah. Sorry. You're like, 'You told me everything,'" according to People. "I can't keep a secret," she added. 'Oh, Hi!' follows a man and a woman as their "first romantic weekend getaway goes awry in a most unexpected way," according to a plot synopsis, as per the outlet. Gordon shared that Lerman was her "first choice" to star opposite her in their new movie. "I've been a big fan of his since I saw Perks of Being a Wallflower. But I also love this movie, Shirley, that he did a couple of years ago. It's completely underrated," she added, reported People. The actress recently shared her working experience with both Lerman and 'The Bears' Jeremy Allen White. "They're both lovely," she said at a screening of the film in New York City on July 22. "They're both lovely people, so that's the similarity between them," she continued, adding, "But, yeah, I'm lucky. My job is easy," reported People. 'Oh, Hi! is currently in theatres. The Bear can be streamed on Hulu. (ANI)
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Molly Gordon wasn't landing starring roles. So she co-wrote one for herself in 'Oh, Hi!'
Conventional wisdom now has it that Hollywood no longer creates and nurtures young stars in the way it once did. Which is to say that if the system won't do it for her, Molly Gordon will simply make herself a leading lady. Known for supporting roles in series such as 'The Bear' and 'Winning Time' and features such as 'Booksmart,' 'Shiva Baby' and 'Theater Camp' (which she also co-wrote and co-directed), Gordon is finally stepping up to her first leading role in a film, for the new 'Oh, Hi!' with a performance that is equally heartfelt as it is unhinged. It premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, after which it was acquired for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics. Gordon shares a story credit on the film and is also a producer, as she takes a stronger grip on creating the roles (and career) that studios may not yet be providing her. Smart, witty and vulnerable, she can come across as a modern iteration of the urbane persona of Diane Keaton. 'I don't think I've gotten to really show this emotion or this darkness or gotten to be this crazy,' says Gordon, 29, of her "Oh, Hi!" turn. 'It would've been cool if it came with someone else giving me that opportunity, but it just didn't really feel like that was going to happen. So hopefully this shows people that I can do other things. But if not, I will keep trying to make my own things.' The movie stars Gordon and Logan Lerman as Iris and Isaac, taking their first out-of-town trip together to a romantic rental house in the country. After some zesty, playful sex inspired by the adult toys they discover in a closet, Isaac reveals — ill-advisedly — that he doesn't see theirs as a committed relationship while still handcuffed to a bed. She takes this as an opportunity to convince him otherwise, leaving him chained up as she pleads her case for why they would make a great couple. He threatens to have her arrested, she calls for backup from her friends (Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds) and complications ensue. Entering a fashionable Los Feliz bistro in a sunshine yellow scoop-neck minidress, a forest green ballcap for local NPR station KCRW perched atop her head, Gordon greets me with an endearingly awkward exchange — to stay seated to shake hands or stand up and hug? — to rival any high-'90s romantic-comedy heroine. 'I've been calling it a rom-com gone wrong,' says Gordon, 'because I don't know how else to explain it. She thinks they're in a rom-com but they're not in a rom-com." 'Oh, Hi!' enters a summer of debate about the modern romantic comedy, with Celine Song's 'Materialists' and Lena Dunham's 'Too Much' pushing the form in some new directions. The premise of 'Oh, Hi!' is something of a Trojan horse, as its girl-takes-boy-hostage concept creates a platform for conversations and considerations on the difficulties of dating. With her mix of winsome appeal and knowing air, Gordon feels of a piece with such established rom-com stars such as Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon or Kate Hudson — yet with just enough smartphone-era savvy to also feel particularly now. 'I think the world is in such a heightened place that it feels like maybe the right rom-com of our time,' she adds. 'In this moment, nothing feels normal. It's not like Meg and faking an orgasm at the deli anymore. Life is just crazy. It's just a different moment.' Born and raised on the westside of Los Angeles, Gordon moved to New York City for college but soon dropped out to pursue acting full-time. In the years since she has typically split her time between the two cities, but has most recently been spending more time in New York, especially since her parents moved there after losing their home in the January fires. Perhaps in a rom-com premise all its own, Gordon is in what she describes as 'a new chapter in New York.' Gordon's mother Jessie Nelson is a director and screenwriter whose credits include the features 'Corrina, Corrina,' and 'I Am Sam,' while her father Bryan Gordon is a prolific television director. (He once worked with a young Lerman in an episode of the short-lived series 'Jack & Bobby.') "Oh, Hi!" writer-director Sophie Brooks and Gordon are longtime friends who found themselves both back in their parents' houses during the early stages of the pandemic and commiserating on relationship troubles and uncommunicative exes. 'She's so funny and dynamic and she has this inherent charm and likability to her onscreen that feels like a leading-lady energy,' says Brooks, 35, of Gordon's onscreen presence. 'She also has this range of being able to do really sentimental, sincere scenes and also being incredibly funny and absurd and big." Viswanathan, 30, was sitting in a sushi spot on Sunset Boulevard that she and Gordon often go to together as she took a call recently to talk about her friend. The two have been close ever since meeting while shooting the 2020 movie 'The Broken Hearts Gallery' and Viswanathan recalled also being surprised when Gordon mentioned that "Oh, Hi!" was her first time leading a film. 'She said to me once: 'This industry is like a swinging spotlight that shines its light on people at various times,' ' said Viswanathan, who also appeared in this summer's 'Thunderbolts*.' 'And I just think that was one of the most profound pieces of wisdom and advice that I've gotten from anybody in the business. That's the perfect way to think about it, because the spotlight — it moves around. She just feels like such a seasoned pro.' Alongside Viswanathan, Gordon is also close with such multi-hyphenate talents as Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, forming a cohort of smart, talented women who have all been navigating Hollywood on and off-screen together. Gordon likes to keep up with the Hollywood trades, reading scripts and tracking projects she has nothing to do with out of a mix of amateur enthusiasm and professional curiosity. She projects a composure and clear-eyed point-of-view that may come partly from growing up around the industry but also from her own studious interest in how the contemporary entertainment business works, right now, from how films get green-lit to how celebrity gossip gets circulated Last year Gordon found herself the target of unexpected scrutiny when tabloid photos emerged of her with her 'The Bear' co-star Jeremy Allen White, stoking fevered speculation from the show's passionate fandom. 'Oh, Hi!' also includes Gordon's first nude scenes, with pictures taken from a preview screening popping up online before the film had even opened. It has taken all her sharpness and confidence to steer around these pitfalls of rising fame. 'I think the internet is really gross and scary and I've become my most depressed when I start to view my art through that or I read too much of that stuff," says Gordon. "That's the hardest part about making things in 2025. But then I also talk about this with my sounding board of women, it's like you have to kind of be a little bit on the internet to know what people want and it helps your art. Especially with comedy, you want it to be so of the time. But then sometimes I'll read stuff and I'll be like, 'Oh, now I'm thinking about making a movie through this lens of a review or a bad comment.' It's just hard to find that balance. So I try to not look at it that much.' As to whether she is currently in any kind of relationship with anyone at all, Gordon says succinctly, 'I don't ever want to talk about my personal life. Remember Jack Nicholson with the sunglasses sitting courtside at the Lakers? Let's all go back to that.' The nature of the story in 'Oh, Hi!' meant that Lerman spent long stretches of the production handcuffed to a bed, sometimes for hours at a time. Between shots, Gordon would make sure he had water or fetch him snacks. 'She really was looking after everybody in this production and really wanting everybody to do their best work,' Lerman, 33, says in a phone call from his home in Los Angeles. 'It was infectious. And I think it flowed through to everybody else, every other department, just how much Molly loved this movie.' Read more: Logan Lerman and the pandemic vice he learned from Stanley Tucci Brooks notes how when Gordon was in a scene, their dynamic was one of actor and director, but between shots, 'she was an incredibly active producer, really dealing with nitty-gritty things.' During one pivotal early scene, in which the two main characters have a romantic dinner outside, complications almost forced a revision due to budget and scheduling issues. But it was Gordon who backed up her director. 'It was written as outside — I wanted it to be outside," Brooks remembers. "And there was this day where kind of everybody was pushing me to move it inside. And she was like, 'Sophie, you don't want it inside. You want it outside, it should be outside.' And she was right. I was so grateful to her in that moment that my producer was like, 'No, that's not what you want. let's keep it as you intended it.' ' Viswanathan recalled a time when she and Gordon were going up for the same role and worked on their self-taped auditions together. (Neither got the part.) Gordon's notes and direction were decisive and convincing, and so Viswanathan is not surprised to see her moving further toward creating and shepherding her own projects. 'It's a very precarious landscape for women with roles like ['Oh, Hi!'s' Iris],' said Viswanathan. 'But that's kind of the magic of Molly. She's just the most likable person. It was something that she had to constantly find the balance for: how crazy to make her, how sympathetic, how comedic, how dramatic. It's a difficult tone. So watching her navigate all of it on no sleep was really a marvel.' As an actor Gordon will soon be seen alongside Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson in the 2026 live-action-animation hybrid 'Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie' (for which, she emphasizes, they all play people). Gordon is also co-writing the screenplay for a remake of the '80s comedy 'Outrageous Fortune' about two struggling actresses for Searchlight Pictures which she hopes to be allowed to direct herself. 'What I have in my head is going to be big,' says Gordon, likening the idea to "The Nice Guys," the Ryan Gosling-Russell Crowe action-comedy. 'And so I'm going to have to convince people and do the song-and-dance. And I'm ready to do it.' Before that she will direct and star in the high school reunion comedy 'Peaked,' which she also co-wrote, for A24. 'The movie kind of explores the age that I'm at right now, which is kind of: Where do we fit? I'm not a mother but I'm not the naive 22-year-old. I'm in this nebulous place of like: Where do we put her?' says Gordon. 'Which is kind of why I started writing my own stuff.' Has she answered that question for herself yet? 'Where do I fit? I think it's a constant question,' says Gordon. 'I'm lucky to have that mirrored back in all my friends who see the world in a similar way that I do. But I'll be on my journey of where do I fit probably till I die.' Interview finished and on her way to the door, Gordon navigates her farewell having already reconfigured the blocking of who sits and who stands in a small-scale piece of directing, producing and performing all at once. That's at least one problem solved. Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Molly Gordon wasn't landing starring roles. So she co-wrote one for herself in ‘Oh, Hi!'
Conventional wisdom now has it that Hollywood no longer creates and nurtures young stars in the way it once did. Which is to say that if the system won't do it for her, Molly Gordon will simply make herself a leading lady. Known for supporting roles in series such as 'The Bear' and 'Winning Time' and features such as 'Booksmart,' 'Shiva Baby' and 'Theater Camp' (which she also co-wrote and co-directed), Gordon is finally stepping up to her first leading role in a film, for the new 'Oh, Hi!' with a performance that is equally heartfelt as it is unhinged. It premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, after which it was acquired for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics. Gordon shares a story credit on the film and is also a producer, as she takes a stronger grip on creating the roles (and career) that studios may not yet be providing her. Smart, witty and vulnerable, she can come across as a modern iteration of the urbane persona of Diane Keaton. 'I don't think I've gotten to really show this emotion or this darkness or gotten to be this crazy,' says Gordon, 29, of her 'Oh, Hi!' turn. 'It would've been cool if it came with someone else giving me that opportunity, but it just didn't really feel like that was going to happen. So hopefully this shows people that I can do other things. But if not, I will keep trying to make my own things.' The movie stars Gordon and Logan Lerman as Iris and Isaac, taking their first out-of-town trip together to a romantic rental house in the country. After some zesty, playful sex inspired by the adult toys they discover in a closet, Isaac reveals — ill-advisedly — that he doesn't see theirs as a committed relationship while still handcuffed to a bed. She takes this as an opportunity to convince him otherwise, leaving him chained up as she pleads her case for why they would make a great couple. He threatens to have her arrested, she calls for backup from her friends (Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds) and complications ensue. Entering a fashionable Los Feliz bistro in a sunshine yellow scoop-neck minidress, a forest green ballcap for local NPR station KCRW perched atop her head, Gordon greets me with an endearingly awkward exchange — to stay seated to shake hands or stand up and hug? — to rival any high-'90s romantic-comedy heroine. 'I've been calling it a rom-com gone wrong,' says Gordon, 'because I don't know how else to explain it. She thinks they're in a rom-com but they're not in a rom-com.' 'Oh, Hi!' enters a summer of debate about the modern romantic comedy, with Celine Song's 'Materialists' and Lena Dunham's 'Too Much' pushing the form in some new directions. The premise of 'Oh, Hi!' is something of a Trojan horse, as its girl-takes-boy-hostage concept creates a platform for conversations and considerations on the difficulties of dating. With her mix of winsome appeal and knowing air, Gordon feels of a piece with such established rom-com stars such as Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon or Kate Hudson — yet with just enough smartphone-era savvy to also feel particularly now. 'I think the world is in such a heightened place that it feels like maybe the right rom-com of our time,' she adds. 'In this moment, nothing feels normal. It's not like Meg and faking an orgasm at the deli anymore. Life is just crazy. It's just a different moment.' Born and raised on the westside of Los Angeles, Gordon moved to New York City for college but soon dropped out to pursue acting full-time. In the years since she has typically split her time between the two cities, but has most recently been spending more time in New York, especially since her parents moved there after losing their home in the January fires. Perhaps in a rom-com premise all its own, Gordon is in what she describes as 'a new chapter in New York.' Gordon's mother Jessie Nelson is a director and screenwriter whose credits include the features 'Corrina, Corrina,' and 'I Am Sam,' while her father Bryan Gordon is a prolific television director. (He once worked with a young Lerman in an episode of the short-lived series 'Jack & Bobby.') 'Oh, Hi!' writer-director Sophie Brooks and Gordon are longtime friends who found themselves both back in their parents' houses during the early stages of the pandemic and commiserating on relationship troubles and uncommunicative exes. 'She's so funny and dynamic and she has this inherent charm and likability to her onscreen that feels like a leading-lady energy,' says Brooks, 35, of Gordon's onscreen presence. 'She also has this range of being able to do really sentimental, sincere scenes and also being incredibly funny and absurd and big.' Viswanathan, 30, was sitting in a sushi spot on Sunset Boulevard that she and Gordon often go to together as she took a call recently to talk about her friend. The two have been close ever since meeting while shooting the 2020 movie 'The Broken Hearts Gallery' and Viswanathan recalled also being surprised when Gordon mentioned that 'Oh, Hi!' was her first time leading a film. 'She said to me once, this industry is like a swinging spotlight that shines its light on people at various times,' said Viswanathan, who also appeared in this summer's 'Thunderbolts*.' 'And I just think that was one of the most profound pieces of wisdom and advice that I've gotten from anybody in the business. That's the perfect way to think about it, because the spotlight — it moves around. She just feels like such a seasoned pro.' Alongside Viswanathan, Gordon is also close with such multi-hyphenate talents as Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, forming a cohort of smart, talented women who have all been navigating Hollywood on and off-screen together. Gordon likes to keep up with the Hollywood trades, reading scripts and tracking projects she has nothing to do with out of a mix of amateur enthusiasm and professional curiosity. She projects a composure and clear-eyed point-of-view that may come partly from growing up around the industry but also from her own studious interest in how the contemporary entertainment business works, right now, from how films get green-lit to how celebrity gossip gets circulated Last year Gordon found herself the target of unexpected scrutiny when tabloid photos emerged of her with her 'The Bear' co-star Jeremy Allen White, stoking fevered speculation from the show's passionate fandom. 'Oh, Hi!' also includes Gordon's first nude scenes, with pictures taken from a preview screening popping up online before the film had even opened. It has taken all her sharpness and confidence to steer around these pitfalls of rising fame. 'I think the internet is really gross and scary and I've become my most depressed when I start to view my art through that or I read too much of that stuff,' says Gordon. 'That's the hardest part about making things in 2025. But then I also talk about this with my sounding board of women, it's like you have to kind of be a little bit on the internet to know what people want and it helps your art. Especially with comedy, you want it to be so of the time. But then sometimes I'll read stuff and I'll be like, oh, now I'm thinking about making a movie through this lens of a review or a bad comment. It's just hard to find that balance. So I try to not look at it that much.' As to whether she is currently in any kind of relationship with anyone at all, Gordon says succinctly, 'I don't ever want to talk about my personal life. Remember Jack Nicholson with the sunglasses sitting courtside at the Lakers? Let's all go back to that.' The nature of the story in 'Oh, Hi!' meant that Lerman spent long stretches of the production handcuffed to a bed, sometimes for hours at a time. Between shots, Gordon would make sure he had water or fetch him snacks. 'She really was looking after everybody in this production and really wanting everybody to do their best work,' Lerman, 33, says in a phone call from his home in Los Angeles. 'It was infectious. And I think it flowed through to everybody else, every other department, just how much Molly loved this movie.' Brooks notes how when Gordon was in a scene, their dynamic was one of actor and director, but between shots, 'she was an incredibly active producer, really dealing with nitty-gritty things.' During one pivotal early scene, in which the two main characters have a romantic dinner outside, complications almost forced a revision due to budget and scheduling issues. But it was Gordon who backed up her director. 'It was written as outside — I wanted it to be outside,' Brooks remembers. 'And there was this day where kind of everybody was pushing me to move it inside. And she was like, 'Sophie, you don't want it inside. You want it outside, it should be outside.' And she was right. I was so grateful to her in that moment that my producer was like, 'No, that's not what you want. let's keep it as you intended it.' ' Viswanathan recalled a time when she and Gordon were going up for the same role and worked on their self-taped auditions together. (Neither got the part.) Gordon's notes and direction were decisive and convincing, and so Viswanathan is not surprised to see her moving further toward creating and shepherding her own projects. 'It's a very precarious landscape for women with roles like ['Oh, Hi!'s' Iris],' said Viswanathan. 'But that's kind of the magic of Molly. She's just the most likable person. It was something that she had to constantly find the balance for: how crazy to make her, how sympathetic, how comedic, how dramatic. It's a difficult tone. So watching her navigate all of it on no sleep was really a marvel.' As an actor Gordon will soon be seen alongside Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson in the 2026 live-action-animation hybrid 'Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie' (for which, she emphasizes, they all play people). Gordon is also co-writing the screenplay for a remake of the '80s comedy 'Outrageous Fortune' about two struggling actresses for Searchlight Pictures which she hopes to be allowed to direct herself. 'What I have in my head is going to be big,' says Gordon, likening the idea to 'The Nice Guys,' the Ryan Gosling-Russell Crowe action-comedy. 'And so I'm going to have to convince people and do the song-and-dance. And I'm ready to do it.' Before that she will direct and star in the high school reunion comedy 'Peaked,' which she also co-wrote, for A24. 'The movie kind of explores the age that I'm at right now, which is kind of: Where do we fit? I'm not a mother but I'm not the naive 22-year-old. I'm in this nebulous place of like: Where do we put her?' says Gordon. 'Which is kind of why I started writing my own stuff.' Has she answered that question for herself yet? 'Where do I fit? I think it's a constant question,' says Gordon. 'I'm lucky to have that mirrored back in all my friends who see the world in a similar way that I do. But I'll be on my journey of where do I fit probably till I die.' Interview finished and on her way to the door, Gordon navigates her farewell having already reconfigured the blocking of who sits and who stands in a small-scale piece of directing, producing and performing all at once. That's at least one problem solved.
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The funny-tragic rom-com ‘Oh, Hi!' starts blissful, ends toxic
The high-stakes romantic comedy 'Oh, Hi!' is a backhanded compliment to lotharios like Rudolph Valentino, James Bond and 'The Wolf of Wall Street's' Jordan Belfort. At least those frank seducers wanted quickies. Fickle Isaac (Logan Lerman) strings women along pretending to be a sweetheart. Four months into dating Iris (a bubbly Molly Gordon), he whisks the smitten girl on a weekend getaway to a farmhouse in fictional High Falls with quaint Shaker furniture and a closet of erotic accessories. There, at the worst possible time, Isaac blurts he doesn't want to commit. His kindness is cruel — and Iris wants payback. The first act is all infatuation with director Sophie Brooks and cinematographer Conor Murphy delighting in scenes of superficial bliss: sunflowers, pretty clouds, Adirondack chairs nestled together just so. The intention is to slap each shot with the Instagram hashtag #couplegoals. Then Brooks shifts into the light thriller she's teased since the opening notes of heaving, scratchy violins. Iris and Isaac haven't noticed any red flags. But there are cautionary pink ones. Iris is visibly insecure about Isaac's conversations with other women, including the strawberry peddler who coos that he has 'soft hands,' and his mother, who dials him up to crack inside jokes. Iris' smile is too tense; Isaac's comes too smoothly, even when sharing a memory of catching his father cheating on his mom. A pop psychologist would say witnessing his dad's infidelity triggered Isaac's fear of commitment. (Brian de Palma experienced nearly the same thing and turned into, well, Brian de Palma.) But Isaac is a literature guy, toting around a paperback of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago's 'Blindness' to underscore that neither one of them sees their mismatch clearly. Isaac just wants the girlfriend experience without the weight of expectations. Iris' dewy eyes are all expectation. The plot finagles a way to tether them to the bedroom until they get closer to being on the same page. (It involves several pairs of handcuffs.) The mechanics of this hostage situation are hard to buy. You have to keep reminding yourself that she's drunk and impulsive while he, rather nonsensically, holds his feelings inside until the exact moment he should shut up and save himself. Partners like Isaac have been edging toward a clinical diagnosis: alexithymia, or the inability to describe your emotions. It's the people around the patient who suffer the symptoms. Iris' best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan, an always welcome sight) offers a blunter verdict: 'Classic softboy,' she laments. 'They trick you, they get you — they're the worst.' And they're not new, although they do seem to be mushrooming. Cinema has warned us about variations of this breed of harmless-looking heartbreaker for generations — it was Woody Allen's entire persona. The female version is Julia Roberts' 'Runaway Bride,' so mealy about her own feelings that she ditches four grooms at the altar. This month, you can also watch the pretty good new psychological horror film 'Bury Me When I'm Dead,' which trips over an even higher narrative hurdle by telling its story through the POV of its wishy-washy lead. Passivity can be as impossible to capture on camera as the moon. Movie scripts, like vexed suitors, struggle to pin down a vaporous lover. Here, Isaac attempts to outrun criticism by sighing, 'The issue is that I treated you too well?' Lerman is the former teen dreamboat of 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' and the 'Percy Jackson' series, and he's interesting casting. Girls from the ages of 11 to 15 idealize pinups like him who have been packaged as handsome, innocuous and flat. Accordingly, he plays Isaac shallowly so that Iris can fill him in with her own projections. If he gave the character a personality, we'd get distracted wondering whether the couple could work out. I'm noncommittal myself on whether Lerman delivers a serviceable performance or a strong one. But his Isaac excels at spotting what people want and reflecting it back. He's unnervingly good at faking charm, like a fox that smooth-talks its way out of a trap. It's a bigger issue that the film doesn't have a handle on Iris' character. One moment, she's an empathetic audience stand-in, the next she's Kathy Bates in 'Misery.' Despite those bumps, Gordon, who shares a story credit with Brooks, is a nimble, likable comedian. Capitalizing on her theater-kid energy, she executes a talent-show dance number to capture Isaac's heart. (Check out her comedy 'Theater Camp,' which Gordon co-wrote and co-directed.) 'Oh, Hi!' sides more with her than him, which is understandable given the women who made it and its intended rom-com audience. Yet that allegiance puts it uncomfortably close to hissing, 'Look what you made me do.' One smart critique launched by the film (albeit underdeveloped) is that no one wants to confront Iris with the truth. Her mother (Polly Draper) comes with her own baggage, advising her daughter, 'Sometimes men don't know what's best for them.' Meanwhile, the internet's you-go-girl optimists placate Iris with flimsy assurances that men always pull away before they commit. As for Max, she suggests killing Isaac, then claims she's kidding. Is she? Probably. But both she and Iris are so accustomed to disguising their wants with humor that it's hard for them — and us — to know what they genuinely think. Max's own boyfriend, the mellow and supportive Kenny (John Reynolds), may as well be wearing a T-shirt that says, 'Not All Bedmates.' Otherwise, the only other mildly memorable role is a prurient neighbor played by David Cross, who is really just there to lend the indie production his star clout. Pointedly and inevitably, our leads regress into Mars-Venus caricatures — he's the jerk, she's the psycho — as Brooks vents her frustration that gender tropes haven't evolved. And not for lack of trying. For months, Isaac has whipped up homemade scallop dinners, while Iris patiently played it cool. The film's core question is: How have men and women worked so hard to overcome toxic archetypes and still wound up stuck here? There's no satisfying answer to that. Brooks can merely offer this flawed pair more kindness than they grant each other (or themselves). Which makes 'Oh, Hi!' a pleasant if perilous date night film. Having spent an enjoyable evening with it myself, I have to admit: I like the movie fine, but I'm not in love.
San Francisco Chronicle
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: ‘Oh, Hi!' is a movie that has no business working, but somehow it does
We've all seen movies that have a great premise and a solid story, but they fail in execution, because the filmmakers just can't bring it off. The reverse situation is almost never heard of — a movie with a bad premise and weak story that, somehow, kind of works. But 'Oh, Hi!' is that rare case, a movie that's engaging and interesting moment by moment, but everything else is wrong with it. Writer-director Sophie Brooks locks into a narrative that's unpleasant and far-fetched and that forces the characters to behave in ways that make no sense. And Brooks concludes the movie as if in search of the least dramatic ending she could devise. What holds it all together is Molly Gordon, who stars in the film and co-wrote the story with Brooks. She plays a young woman, Iris, who goes away for the weekend with her boyfriend, Isaac (Logan Lerman). They have been dating for four months, and this weekend represents a milestone – their first time away together and an opportunity to get closer. The first 20 minutes of 'Oh, Hi!' are the best, which is odd, because next to nothing happens. The movie begins with them driving down the road, stopping to buy strawberries. Then they get to the house that they're renting, have sex, go swimming, and have sex again. At this stage, the movie provides nothing but the pleasant spectacle of two people getting along. Yet if you pay close attention, you might detect some points of potential conflict. Very subtly, Brooks and her actors are able to hint that, while Iris is wholeheartedly keen on Isaac, Isaac may have some reservations about Iris. Though he can be effusive and demonstrative, he can also be, at times, guarded, as if reserving judgment or concealing his thoughts. This comes to a head when, at the worst possible time, he tells Iris that he is seeing other women and doesn't want to be in an exclusive relationship. Her reaction is extreme — don't read any other reviews if you don't want to know how extreme — and the rest of the movie is about the consequences of that response. The film hinges on Gordon's ability, not to be sympathetic, but engaging and fun to watch. Over the years, I've noticed that the best emerging stars are often people who already seem familiar the first time you see them. Gordon is like that — familiar, while also being likable, refreshingly self-mocking and comedically inventive. Easily, the character of Iris could have been played as a flat-out wackjob, and the film could have descended into horror-movie territory, but Gordon, without softening Iris' bizarre behavior, sets a light tone. In the end, 'Oh, Hi!' can almost seem like a meaningless exercise, because the points Brooks seems to be making — about the difficulties of establishing intimacy and the obstacles in the way of commitment — are fairly banal. That these difficulties are especially pronounced for millennials and Generation Z folks helps Brooks somewhat, but the movie glances off these issues in such a superficial way that it's hard to feel that anything important is being said. Yet sometimes things are best said without words. There's something about the way in which Gordon plays Iris — with her insecurity and neediness living alongside her wit, good humor, vivacity and intelligence — that speaks louder than the screenplay. Gordon makes you think, wow, if someone of such obvious appeal is coming unglued, maybe times are tough all over.
