Oh, Hi! | Film Review

Written By Ian Maisel

Released July 25, 2025

Oh, Hi! Fumbles Its Way from Charm to Chaos

The first half hour of Oh, Hi! is a real delight.

Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman play a young Gen Z couple heading out for a romantic weekend, and for a moment, it feels like we’re getting something rare in modern cinema: a grounded, sexy, funny, human story. No high concept. No postmodern twists. Just two attractive people falling for each other in a way that feels real. I was locked in. The chemistry between Gordon and Lerman is undeniable, and their banter had that kind of lived-in ease that makes you forget you're watching a movie.

Directed by Sophie Brooks and co-written with Molly Gordon, the film opens with a naturalism that’s loose, observational, and tactile. You think, wow, they really made a movie. And then, about thirty minutes in, it veers completely off the rails.

Without warning, the plot contorts itself into a clumsy gimmick: Gordon’s character chains Lerman’s to the bed and refuses to let him leave. At first, it’s played for psychological tension in an homage to the film Misery. But that thread is quickly abandoned. Instead, we get a farcical, SNL-style setup that drags on and on. Friends arrive. There's talk of kidnapping charges. Suddenly, we’re in a cartoon version of the world where no one seems to have heard of law enforcement or basic morality. The guy’s still chained to the bed, and now we’re supposed to laugh?

The tone turns bizarre, like a half-baked social satire that doesn’t trust its own characters or audience. Every grounded detail that made the first act shine gets replaced with thin caricatures and psychobabble. There’s a moment when you just want Logan’s character to break free, call the cops, and get as far away from this nightmare as possible. Instead, the movie insists on ending with forced heart-to-heart monologues about life and love, as if any of what just happened makes emotional sense.

Look, if you're going to go full kidnapping dark comedy, go all in. Show us the real psychological fallout. Let there be consequences. But don’t bait us with a great little indie romance and then swerve into faux-provocative nonsense to justify a theatrical release.

There’s a great film buried inside Oh, Hi! It’s in the first 30 minutes, the part where people are just people. I wish they'd trusted that more. Sometimes the bravest thing a filmmaker can do is tell a small story well. We don’t need the twist. We don’t need the chains. We just want to believe.

Ian Maisel

When I was in high school I worked as a movie theater projectionist, acted in my school plays, and published a series of autobiographical comic books that I sold at music and bookstores. I’ve always loved entertainment, and at Brown University I double majored in Visual Arts and Modern European History because the history teachers told the best stories.

My career began at an artificial intelligence startup company where I worked as a graphic designer and animator creating 3D avatars for virtual personalities. I used a program called Poser that was kind of like a Barbie Dream House for cartoons. My comic illustrations were published in the international edition of Time magazine.

In 2006, I completed a graduate Certificate of Publishing and Communications at Harvard University, where I studied creative writing, acting, and media production. I auditioned for the student theater and was cast in a high-brow Chekhov play and a low-brow undergraduate comedy where I played a California high school guitarist like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

At Boston College I continued developing my career as a graphic designer and went on to work as an animator at a Jewish nonprofit. In 2008 I left Boston to chase the California dream. I got a job in San Francisco as a litigation graphics specialist for intellectual property attorneys, and I worked on some high-stakes legal trials where I barely slept for a week!

After five years I transitioned into the corporate world and worked as a contract presentation designer at Visa and Bare Minerals. I enjoyed collaborating with senior executives to bring their ideas to life through graphic storytelling and large-scale event presentations. One of my highlights was getting to opportunity to produce an in-house interview with the supermodel Christy Turlington!

In 2017 I took on my first Senior Designer role at Alexandria Real Estate, where I designed high-end investor presentations and art directed photoshoots for major tech companies including Facebook, Google, and Pinterest. The following year I flew out to LA to study video production, and went on to create a digital signage content management system for Alexandria’s 60+ high-tech office buildings across the country.

In 2020 I expanded my focus into social media by producing a video advertising campaign that launched a Visa executive’s speaking career by generating 30,000 social media engagements in five months. Since then I’ve continued designing creative presentations, producing videos, and writing social media campaigns for a wide range of brands including the University of San Francisco and Meta. I love working with high-performance creative teams on exciting projects and enjoy utilizing my creative background to work at the intersection of design, entertainment, and culture.

https://www.ianmaisel.com
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