The plot description for this coming-of-age sex comedy wouldn\u2019t feel out-of-place amongst similar movies of the \u201880s, \u201890s, and early \u201800s. Jennifer Lawrence stars as Maddie Barker, an Uber driver whose car has been repossessed due to a tax lien on her mother\u2019s home in Montauk, Long Island. Without her car, she doesn\u2019t have a way to make money during the busy summer tourist season \u2014 or pay off what she owes the IRS \u2014 leaving her desperate enough to answer a Craigslist ad (which is apparently still a thing). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overbearing parents Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti) are equally desperate, but not for money. They want their awkward 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), to come out of his shell before he leaves for Princeton in the fall, and they\u2019re offering their old Buick Regal to a woman who can \u201cdate\u201d their virgin son. With few other options, the commitment-phobic Maddie is game, but she soon finds that it won\u2019t be as easy to bed Percy as she\u2019d initially hoped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like its two central characters, No Hard Feelings<\/em> is a study in contrasts. Thanks to crackling chemistry between Lawrence and Feldman, genuine emotion courses through the movie, especially in a moving scene that features a lovely rendition of Hall & Oates \u201cManeater.\u201d Their relationship shouldn\u2019t work for a lot of reasons, but the actors make their connection feel real, even when it\u2019s not as well supported by the script from Stupnitsky and Dirty Grandpa<\/em>\u2019s John Phillips. For all her sexual experience, Maddie has found it just as hard to grow up as Percy, giving them something to bond over as she can\u2019t leave her hometown as much as he struggles to go outside his bedroom. Yet alongside all that tenderness, No Hard Feelings<\/em> is foul-mouthed and filthy-minded, with a no-holds-barred approach to its often dark sense of humor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the other gags land, too, largely thanks to a committed performance from Lawrence, who hasn\u2019t done a pure comedy before this one. She displays the genius comic timing of classic Hollywood\u2019s best actresses, but she\u2019s deploying them in a film that definitely would not have adhered to the Hays Code. She\u2019s also game for absolutely anything, with no sense of vanity or self-consciousness, producing a performance that\u2019s just as revelatory as her breakthrough in Winter\u2019s Bone<\/em> or her Oscar-winning turn in Silver Linings Playbook<\/em>. Feldman is a perfect match in his first big movie role, embodying an innocence that gives the film its heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No Hard Feelings<\/em> skims over details, with key moments seemingly cut out in editing. The third act feels rushed, and while a 100-minute movie is always appreciated, it shouldn\u2019t be at the cost of cohesion. Stupnitsky often makes thoughtful choices in the visuals, but he is sometimes challenged by trying to balance the film\u2019s raunchy approach with its sentimentality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet for all its problems, No Hard Feelings<\/em> is a blast, the rare R-rated comedy with a theatrical release \u2014 and one that\u2019s worth seeing in a theater if you can. There are some bits so foul that you might wonder if it\u2019s okay to laugh, but watching it alongside others in the dark means that you won\u2019t be the only terrible person cracking up at these very wrong, but very good jokes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “No Hard Feelings” is in theaters today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/no-hard2-1-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
It also looks like a throwback to the sex comedies of another era while being fully grounded in 2023. You get the requisite T&A you\u2019d expect, but No Hard Feelings<\/em> offers the rare female nudity that exists for laughs, not titillation, which is usually reserved for men baring it all. Progress. There\u2019s some fun Gen Z-vs-millennial humor, with jokes about 32-year-old Maddie\u2019s advancing age guaranteeing a laugh every time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nB<\/h2>\n\n\n\n