No Hard Feelings: Raunchy Jennifer Lawrence Comedy Silly but Fun
By Kim Hughes
Rating: B-
With a sorta stupid but undeniably likable film like No Hard Feelings, it’s best not to think too hard and just go with it.
While the cheeky and profane new comedy is mostly a vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, she has the wattage to carry it. Plus, her supporting cast — notably young co-star Andrew Barth Feldman, he of the perennially hangdog expression — seem appropriately attuned to the film’s screwball vibe. No one is here trying to make a statement. Or at least not much of one.
If you can get past the faintly ridiculous-slash-icky premise, underscored by the film’s double-entendre title, No Hard Feelings plays its broad comedy gamely and with some snappy dialogue to boot, albeit much given away in the trailer.
In quickly gentrifying Montauk, wisecracking, workaday Maddie (Lawrence) is about to have her car repossessed, a bad break for a bartender who supplements her income as an Uber driver. A real estate agent is hounding her to sell her modest home — a somewhat fraught legacy gift from her mom — to redevelop the property.
It’s yet another example of the small town she and her friends grew up in being coopted by rich New Yorkers seeking a summer retreat and debasing the landscape for locals in the process.
Coincidentally, two of those rich-y riches (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) have a 19-year-old son, Percy, about to enter Princeton. Percy is lovely and very bright but introverted. His folks scheme to hire Maddie to “bring him out of his shell” socially and sexually so he will adjust more easily at college. The payment? A free and clear Buick Regal that will put Maddie back in business. Kind of like Failure to Launch, but lewder.
What follows can probably be imagined even without seeing the trailer. Hilarity more or less ensues as Maddie’s attempts to seduce shy Percy backfire, misfire, and occasionally blow up in her face. Despite Maddie’s fumbles, Percy falls hard while the emotionally damaged Maddie learns that the kid might be smarter about love than previously imagined. Together, they navigate this new terrain.
A series of slapstick set pieces carries the action, many spinning on the twin fish-out-of-water premises of the couple’s age gap (Maddie is 32 to Percy’s 19) and the gap in their social status. To wit, Maddie crashes a house party attended by Percy’s high school–age peers, sticks out like a sore thumb and eventually gets booted for upending the festivities while making “kids today” proclamations.
Another scene finds Maddie and Percy skinny-dipping. When rowdy ne’er-do-wells steal their clothing, a fully naked and highly combative Maddie flies out of the water to snatch their stuff back. A naked Jennifer Lawrence may be a selling point for some.
The supporting performances by Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur as Maddie's wisecracking buddies are charming, and a brief but charged scene with former SNL star Kyle Mooney as Percy’s former nanny, skeptical of Percy’s new, much-older girlfriend’s motives, had the theatre in stitches.
Plus, Lawrence — directed here by Gene Stupnitsky (Bad Teacher from 2011) — is a gifted comic actor who brings physicality along with wit.
Don’t think. Just go with it.
No Hard Feelings. Written and directed by Gene Stupnitsky with John Phillips. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Matthew Broderick and Natalie Morales. Opens wide June 23.