The sex comedy used to be a staple of summer cinema, giving us some of the funniest horrific puerile moments that rise beneath vulgarity, as Mel Brooks wonderfully exclaimed back in the day. Jennifer Lawrence grew up on movies like that, and uses all of her clout to try to resurrect them. No Hard Feelings doesn’t quite reach the highs of the best of the genre, but it is good enough to watch at home with some friends and maybe give a new generation of movie comedians some inspiration to write the comedy glue that many friends rely on for a laugh or seven.
In beautiful seaside Montauk, 30ish year old Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) is going through tough times. Being priced out of the house she and her deceased mom lived in, Maddie barely can make ends meet, as her car got repossessed during peak Uber season. Desperate to save her house, Maddie and her friend Sarah (Natalie Morales) spot an ad in the local paper offering a 1987 Buick Regal. The catch: Maddie would have to date 18 year old Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), the sheltered son of helicopter parents Allison (Laura Benanti) and Laird (Matthew Broderick). Like, DATE him date him, and date his brains out.
No Hard Feelings will definitely be the movie that proved to me that Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress. I know she’s won an Oscar, but great actors elevate mediocre movies to good movies, which Lawrence does here. The actress is fearless, constantly pushing the envelope using all of her skills she’s honed onscreen and off. I certainly underestimated her capability of Will Ferrell like physical humor, repeatedly sacrificing herself at the alter of dignity for the sake of a great joke. Anyone who’s watched an interview with Lawrence knows she can roll with the punches conversationally too, adopting all sorts of comedic personas depending on what the scene needs. With Percy she’s playing a Marilyn Monroe like sexpot, cut to next scene, where she’s doing a coiled snake MMA fighter, exploding with profanity at some dumb teenagers, following that up with a Friends like hang out scene with Sarah and her husband Jim (Scott MacArthur). Throw that on top of a smoothly drawn character arc for Maddie, and JLaw proves why she’s one of the greats already.
The rest of No Hard Feelings is a mixed bag, clearly riding the coattails of Jennifer Lawrence’s talents. Andrew Barth Feldman is a bright spot. The movie probably doesn’t work if he can’t hold his own across from Lawrence, which he does remarkably well. The supporting cast is mostly a disappointment, wasting some talented people in poorly written cameos; the lone exception is Natalie Morales, who makes everything she’s in better. When some thought is put into the arc of a scene, No Hard Feelings cooks pretty well, but too often the movie feels like its being made up as it goes along, leading to clunky abrupt transitions and missed comedic opportunities that could’ve been great with one more pass.
In the end, I’m glad No Hard Feelings exists. Since probably Girls Trip, big studio comedies have been absent from the world, absorbed into other genres instead of being their own thing. Here’s hoping No Hard Feelings is the 1.0 version of the genre resurrection, with other films fixing the bad kinks and adding in more fun kinks into the movies. Spoiler Alert: Joy Ride is coming in 3 weeks, and I can confirm what JLaw started that movie blew through the roof. We’re back baby!