Movie Review: The Oh in Ohio
Starring: Parker Posey, Paul Rudd, Mischa Barton, Heather Graham, Danny DeVito
Directed by: Billy Kent

Could-be cult fav settles for C-minus filmmaking.

One of numerous trips to a local tavern started out innocently enough: an order of barbecue chicken wings, a pint and some conversation. Nothing that would merit any notice, except for the fact that halfway through the meal a pair of appropriately clad individuals, claiming to be technical members of a film crew entered our area of the restaurant with the request that we not move around or make any sort of unnecessary noise so as not to disturb the quality of sound recording going on during the filming next door. Our curiosity piqued, we obliged in exchange for a lengthy conversation with one member of the film crew as to what was going on next door.
The crewman informed us that both Heather Graham and Parker Posey were next door filming scenes for an upcoming motion picture, tentatively titled the Oh in Ohio.

A bit over a year later, this film has a limited release all across the United States, including one independent theatre here in Cleveland, the film’s hometown.
Quite obviously the film takes place in Cleveland, both because of the locale known to all of us Cleveland locals, but also because the characters remind us repeatedly during the first half hour of film. There is, apparently, some great love the writers have for Cleveland, choosing to craft a film so devoted to the “Roar on the Shore.”

The Premise: of this film is so mature in nature, I’m not quite sure what I can mention here without becoming obscene. The entire reason I ever saw this film was that it was shot in many locations both on my university campus and in neighborhoods in which my friends live. Sadly, the topics of dialogue during this film often times reach such levels of depravity that this marked the first time I actually considered walking out on a movie.

This was not what I was expecting to occur. I knew the plot’s mature themes, but I expected them to be handled a little bit more frivolously, turning the entire issue into something of a laughing stock. Instead, writer/director Billy Kent strives to create a psycho-comedic art film about the tragedy that effects “30 million” women all over America. Along the way enlisting the help of Liza Minelli, which very well may have been the funniest scene in the entire movie.

This movie was torn between several existences. One is a raunchy, frat-house comedy involving an endless parade of genital jokes, and the other, a poignant disaster film about a marriage flying apart at the seams. Characters are poorly developed, (if at all) and are thrown into one personal conflict after another, but rarely ever justifying or validating one conflict before beginning a new one. This leads to a surprising amount of unexplainable behavior by our starring characters, and after a while you simply must give up and try and make it through to the end, just to see where the chips are headed when the credits begin to roll. We barely make it there.

What starts off as being a smart and funny comedy quickly turns into a three-month crash-course timeline to the $5.50 bin at Wal-mart.
For me, the greatest tragedy of all is the complete non-use and misrepresentation of the city of Cleveland. Films like American Splendor and even Welcome to Collinwood used every ounce of eccentricity and eclectic energy that they could squeeze out of this patch-work city. To use Cleveland as a backdrop for a film means to have a certain understanding of its history, its architecture and its people. Oh misses all of this, choosing instead to create a fictional existence of homes, offices and water slides that ends up being terribly generic, non-specific and wholly incorrect. For better or worse, Cleveland has a very distinct identity about it, and treating it as a third-teir Chicago does nothing to promote a city that will only be shunned by the people who live there. Cleveland may not be the envy of the free world, but its people are proud, and fiercely protective of their home. So go away Hollywood, and don’t come back until you have someone who’s ready to show an accurate side of Cleveland.

The Grade: D

T.