Sometimes, you’re really rooting for a film to be great. With this new Jennifer Lawrence comedy – modelled in the great tradition of the vanishingly rare genre of the teen(ish) sex comedy – this was certainly the case for me.
But even as I chuckled along at obligatory moments, or equivocated to myself about how nice it would be for an original film like this one, with throwback comedy larks and a reasonably sized budget, to do well with audiences and encourage more of the same, it dawned on me: this is nowhere near a great film.
From writer-director Gene Stupnitsky, the man behind Bad Teacher (2011) and Good Boys (2019), No Hard Feelings has a similar fish-out-of-water scenario featuring rebellious, foul-mouthed protagonists. Maddie (Lawrence) is a bartender/uber driver struggling to make ends meet and fearing the loss of her house in the increasingly gentrified seaside town of Montauk.
So she turns to an unconventional means of paying her way: answering an ad that two well-heeled helicopter parents have put out, seeking a faux girlfriend for their academically gifted but socially disastrous 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman, an ideal Hollywood balance between dorky and charming).
Maddie takes on the part with gusto, marching into a dog rescue where Percy volunteers, wearing a pink bodycon dress and tottering heels. Maddie aggressively attempts to seduce the hapless young man, resulting in all the classic romantic moments: going skinny dipping and getting into a naked fistfight, crashing a teenage house party and firing off some jokes about Gen Z spending more time on their phones than having sex, and growing emotional to a piano ballad rendition of…. “Maneater”?
Jennifer Lawrence is, to her credit, going for it: it’s an intensely physical and often unlikeable role, and Lawrence does seem to have a real nerve for it. But the comic timing rarely lands: the film is full of jokes and situations that fall flat, feeling broadly goofy but never laugh-out-loud funny. As a result, this forced romance feels a bit queasy and uncomfortable, a tonally strange dramedy that tries to move toward a “heartwarming” conclusion with neither enough gross-out hilarity nor enough genuinely believable emotional stakes.
No Hard Feelings could have been an exciting litmus test for the kinds of movies many of us wish Hollywood still made. Sadly, this isn’t the kind of movie anyone wishes was made.
