No Hard Feelings Review: Jennifer Lawrence Shines in a Raucously Raunchy Comedy
Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
Jennifer Lawrence has always been known as someone funny and charming on press tours, awards ceremonies, and in interviews. While she has been in some dramas with comedic tinges, she has never done an outright comedy until now with No Hard Feelings, a film from director Gene Stupnitsky, who helmed 2019’s Good Boys.
Lawrence plays a Montauk local named Maddie, who loses her car and struggles to make ends meet financially. Rich people moving into the town are driving up the property taxes, putting the financial crunch on Maddie and forcing her to supplement her income as an Uber driver to make ends meet. With few options and a limited time to get her vehicle back for the prime summer tourist season, Maddie accepts a Craigslist ad from two parents (Matthew Broderick & Laura Benanti) covertly looking for someone to date their highly introverted son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), coax him out of his shell, and make a man out of him before he leaves for college, in exchange for a car.
The film is wildly funny. Lawrence is a naturally funny person. It is a shame that it has taken this long to get her into a comedy like this, but it is the perfect vehicle for her acting and comedy chops. Her performance resembles Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa or Jason Bateman in Bad Words. Maddie is a free-spirited woman with a carefree attitude, which contrasts sharply with Percy’s shy and sheltered personality. There have been plenty of comedies about nerds losing their virginity, particularly from the 80s and 90s, but rarely from the female perspective, as is the case here.
Much of the early comedy is mined from Maddie’s attempts to turn on the charm, colliding with Percy’s seeming inability to pick up on social cues and general social awkwardness. Feldman is perfectly cast as the teen with no game slowly coming out of his shell. Despite this being a sex comedy, the only scene with any graphic nudity involves a naked Maddie confronting a couple of teenagers who steal her clothes from the beach after she convinces Percy to go skinny dipping at night, so the nudity is played for laughs instead of sexiness.
The film also leans into the comedy of Maddie being just a bit too old to be doing this, try as she might. The Craigslist ad is looking for someone in her early-to-mid 20s, and Maddie is just north of 30. This age gap becomes most pronounced when she follows Percy to a house party and has terrible interactions with partygoers streaming on their social media while following her with their phones when she confronts them.
The Hall & Oates song “Maneater” is a theme song for the movie; it starts as the subject of a funny conversation between the two, becomes symbolic of Maddie’s situation, and eventually, a touching moment at a dinner scene at the piano.
In the vein of some of the great comedies of the last two decades from Judd Apatow, No Hard Feelings balances a raunchy comedy aesthetic with heart. On its face, it should be an absurd premise, with an over-30-year-old woman accepting an ad to “date the brains out” of an 18-year-old by his parents.
The film grounds Maddie’s desperation and acceptance of the ad in her connection to her mother, who got sick and passed away when Maddie was younger, and her reluctance to part with the only home and the only parent she ever had. And maybe it is more than just the ties to her mother; perhaps it is the comfort and safety compared to venturing into the world.
The film builds to an almost impossible place; if Maddie goes through with it all, she comes across as super shady, and there are a lot of questions about consent and deception that come into play that similar movies like this from 30 to 40 years ago never even considered. Percy and Maddie both end up becoming vehicles for change for one another. Some may see that as playing it safe or ultimately pulling its punches, but I thought the film resolved itself best without completely undermining its premise.
No Hard Feelings is the kind of comedy that 20 years ago would have likely been a summer hit. Comedies have a more challenging job of finding a movie theater audience these days, as many of them have moved to streaming releases. But part of the joy of a good comedy is laughing with an audience, and the screening I saw of No Hard Feelings elicited many laughs from a sold-out audience. It is nice to see Lawrence getting to flex some acting muscles she does not get to show off regularly. Here’s hoping she can blend in more of this in the future.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars