It used to be that you could just fart out a movie like No Hard Feelings with a movie star like Jennifer Lawrence and get an automatic $100 million. Those days are seemingly over, and there are many who are happy about that. Perhaps those people are right – bad taste sex comedies are not exactly the pinnacle of a thriving society – but I’d argue against those who find this kind of film easy or lazy. A movie like this doesn’t require a great script but it does require a script that understands and executes foundational story elements that have mostly been abandoned today. It also requires a movie star who’s willing to bring the goods. Jennifer Lawrence’s star was made on prestige comedies from the likes of David O. Russell and Adam McKay, as well as the Hunger Games franchise. No Hard Feelings is her making a point: she can open a movie without the name of an important director – she’s a movie star in her own right.
In an atmosphere where young people (outwardly, anyway) seem down on sex and many people on TikTok espouse the virtues of the draconian, pre-70s Hays Code, releasing a raunchy sex comedy actually does feel like a risk in 2023. Add to that the basic premise – Lawrence plays a 32-year-old woman paid to have sex with an introverted teenager – and you can see where Lawrence finds the challenge. Her name alone is enough to move the film beyond provocative hook to a possibly entertaining movie; and while the marketing sells sex, it’s not exactly a spoiler to say that the actual movie ends up being more about how little sex the main characters end up having. This is, in many ways, a throwback to the kind of $40 million films that would print money for studios fifteen years ago. The kind of middle class movie that should thrive if Hollywood ever hopes to truly rebound from the pandemic.
The film takes place in Montauk, the tourist beach town at the end of Long Island which has been the lifelong home of Maddie Barker (Lawrence). Maddie still lives in her childhood home, a quaint house that was left to her after her mother passed. There’s no mortgage to pay but the sudden influx of newer, richer neighbors has driven up her property taxes. When the IRS seizes her car, her main source of income – Uber driver – is slashed. Forced to roller blade to her paltry bartending gig, Maddie fears losing her mother’s house. It’s her best friend, Sarah (Natalie Morales), that points her to a Craigslist add where a rich couple (Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti) is willing to give a Buick to anyone willing to “date” their clinically shy nineteen-year-old son, Percy (an excellent Andrew Barth Feldman), before he goes to college.
Maddie doesn’t consider herself a sex worker but the opportunity is hard to pass up. When she meets with the parents, they make their intentions clear even if they don’t say the words explicitly: they want her to have sex with their son. When Maddie finally meets Percy, a scrawny gamer with no experience being flirted with, he mistakes her aggressive approach for a kidnapping and maces her. Undaunted – and severely in need of the car – Maddie continues her pursuit, eventually convincing Percy that her affection is genuine. As the awkward teenager finally begins to come out of his shell, Maddie is forced to confront her own issues of intimacy, spurred by a past filled with loss and betrayal. In attempting to seduce Percy, both are led on a path toward self-discovery that reveals what has brought them here in the first place.
The film’s script, written by director Gene Stupnitsky along with John Phillips, falls well short of brilliance, but it does understand what it needs to accomplish. The humor hinges on Maddie’s lack of success in getting the sheepish Percy in the sack, and No Hard Feelings is good at understanding how to get laughs out of Jennifer Lawrence’s inability to get laid. It also placates age-gap purists who feel this movie pushes toward the edge of taboo. In the end this is a predictable but funny comedy that is oftentimes more predictable than it is funny, and it isn’t nearly as provocative as it wants you to think it is. Its appeal is broad in nature, but it’s courting an audience that seems to no longer exist. But there is something refreshing to watch a studio movie that doesn’t aspire toward blockbuster box office or awards season prestige. This is a non-IP movie for normal people who just want to enjoy themselves, the kind of thing that everyone should be clamoring for.
Lawrence, who had something of a resurgence in last year’s Causeway, a movie that reinstated her place as one of our best acting talents and got an Oscar nomination for her co-star, Brian Tyree Henry. She was a producer on that film, which she also is here. Lawrence spent her twenties being more famous than anyone should ever be, but now seems poised to take her career into her own hands, which includes being an influential part of the movies that she makes. It’s hard to see two movies as different as Causeway and No Hard Feelings, but it’s that much more impressive to see how good she is in both, utilizing completely different aspects of her performing ability. We’ve always known she was the full package as an actor, but these last few months just confirm that.
Directed by Gene Stupnitsky