32-year-old Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is about to lose her childhood home in Montauk, New York. She owes a lot of back taxes thanks to skyrocketing property values in the resort town. Maddie works part-time as a bartender and also as an Uber driver. Things seem dire when her car is repossessed. So when an ad offers a Buick Regal as payment, she jumps at the opportunity. All she has to do is date the son of a wealthy couple. Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is an introverted and awkward 19-year-old. His parents, Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti) hope Maddie can bring him out of his shell and prepare him socially before he goes off to Princeton.
So the setup is a throwback to the racy sex comedies of the early 2000s like American Pie, Superbad, and Knocked Up. That genre hasn’t seen many examples since, so I appreciate the difficulty in undertaking an outmoded film category. The plot does offer a smattering of jokes. Unfortunately, the funniest ones are in the trailer, so their impact was lessened for me. I still laughed.
Jennifer Lawrence is outstanding. The actress fully embraces the slapstick humor, giving an exuberant performance packed with pratfalls. The actress has to engage in extroverted, shall we say even daring, behavior. In one scene, she and Percy are skinny dipping at the beach. When a trio of youthful pranksters attempts to steal their clothes, Maddie boldly comes out of the water to get them back. A fight ensues. It might have been a body double, but it was a surprising moment nonetheless.
I only wish the narrative had the strength of conviction to commit to the premise. The chronicle wants to be this naughty comedy. Yet it ultimately succumbs to sentimentality. The saccharine departure feels phony. The approach gets more clouded because the sweetness in the story pushes these two lonely souls together. A touching vignette has Percy playing a tender version of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” impromptu on a restaurant piano. Just when you’re on board for what feels like a Hallmark rom-com, it pulls the rug out from under you.
No Hard Feelings is this schizophrenic mix of bawdy gags and syrupy romance. The script that director Gene Stupnitsky (Good Boys) co-wrote with John Phillips (Dirty Grandpa) is too timid to execute either style effectively. The concept of two people 13 years apart falling in love is apparently too much for 2023. Harold and Maude were separated by 52 years. Granted, that was 1971. Times have changed. And to its credit, the screenplay does manage to lampoon these shifting attitudes. Teens at a party are more preoccupied with their cell phones than each other, to which Maddie hilariously exclaims, “Doesn’t anyone f—- anymore?” I chuckled — quite often, in fact — at Jennifer Lawrence’s spirited performance. The movie is supremely muddled, but she is unquestionably a star.
06-22-23
2 Responses
This was pretty funny. Unfortunately, most of the funniest scenes were in the trailer. I agree, it should have been just a comedy. Leave the love story for Hallmark. 3 ⭐️
I don’t intentionally watch trailers. Unfortunately this one debuted in March and seemed to play before every theatrical movie I saw until its release. It was hard to avoid. I tried.