Sophie Brooks’s Oh, Hi! (2025) charges off through its winding upstate New York roads with the kind of buzzy energy that makes you know you’re bound for a summertime rom-com: baskets of strawberries in the backseat, songs sung in off-key harmonies, a destination house that radiates warmth, and the promise of many romantic nights to come. 

Our couple of choice here is Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman), who are newly dating and indulging in the excitement and thrill that their new romance brings. They’re slow dancing on the porch and sharing childhood stories over dinner. Quickly, however, their apparently first getaway as a couple grows sour when Isaac recoils at Iris’s suggestion that their relationship had become exclusive. The moment brings the entire film to a hilarious and jarring halt, despite the film’s ominous prologue, which indicates Iris has done something bad during the trip. 

We learn that Iris has chained Isaac to the bed with handcuffs. The following acts of the film—in which Iris and Isaac bicker over or negotiate the possible terms of his release—display the strong character work of this offbeat and charming not-quite-rom-com. Brooks’s screenplay, the story for which also credits Gordon, has the snappy, snarky attitude of films like Bottoms (2023), another film that asks its audience to accept the absurdities with pleasant seriousness. Though Oh, Hi!’s silly romps often rely on this farce to mixed results, the film is best understood through the semi-isolation of its location. 

High Falls, a play on the film’s title, is a world of its own, where the unserious plot trajectory operates on a logic unlike our own. At the same time, the film also explores familiar modern dating tropes and desires.

And when the plot occasionally meanders, it quickly rallies with the bursting chemistry between Gordon and Lerman. Gordon in particular shines, playing Iris with the unhinged severity that matches the odd world where her character exists. Her versatility reveals Iris’s tenderness as quickly as it does her unhinged venom, her affection beside her anxiety. 

Meanwhile, Lerman’s delightfully panicked, defensive Isaac soon yields to his own form of gentleness, especially in a surprising flashback and dream sequence late in the film. Paired together, their performances are equally stirring because of their opposite qualities and how those differences interact on screen.  

To some viewers, this frolic into modern romance might feel trite and well-worn. Indeed, some of Iris and Isaac’s conversations veer toward the socially popular, therapy-truths of dating that we might find all too familiar: the overly attached, anxious girlfriend, the soft boy, the fuckboy. These boxed-off identity markers often confine Lerman’s character more than Iris’s, whose personality flourishes in more refreshing ways.

Yet these truths help us better understand these characters, familiar as their analysis might be, and make us like them the better for it. Fittingly, the film doesn’t quite conclude with the explosive bitterness its earlier scenes might suggest is in store. Instead, it revels in the murkier parts of Iris and Isaac’s anxieties in their relationships—a welcome and satisfying ending after all the cheery, delightful silliness.

Review Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers

Feature Image Credit to Sony Pictures Classics