Summary
Is this the return of the throwback teen comedy romp?
Raunchy teen comedies were a dime a dozen in the 1980s and 90s. Their decline has been in favour of more dramatic teen romances, with Superbad (2007), Easy A (2010), and Good Boys (2019) being the exceptions that prove the rule. NO HARD FEELINGS, director Gene Stupnitsky’s follow-up to Good Boys, aims to change that.
When we meet Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), she is down on her luck. The 30-something has lived in the seaside town of Montauk, New York all of her life, growing resentful of summer tourists transforming her home. Facing bankruptcy and the loss of her family home, her source of income evaporates when her car is repossessed.
When her couple friends (Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur) spot a CraigsList ad, Maddie might have found her lifeline. Rich helicopter parents (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) are asking for someone to “date” their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) in exchange for a car. Maddie aims for getting the deed done quickly, but Percy’s shy nature and sweet outlook slows her down.
When the trailer for NO HARD FEELINGS dropped, it caused quite the stir. Yet the final product feels more like an expansion of that trailer rather than the other way around. You know most of how it is going to play out from the get-go, although for all of the ‘edgy’ shopfront it probably has more in common with a romantic comedy than it does a teen sex comedy.
There are a few standout scenes. When Maddie initiates her pursuit of Percy, comic misunderstanding leads her to apparently abduct him in a windowless van. (If you’ve seen any of the promo material, you know how it ends). At two different points in the film, either Percy or Maddie is hanging from the windshield of a speeding vehicle, and it’s minor gold. Of course, the scene that will have most folks talking features a fully nude Lawrence going totally Eastern Promises on some beach teens.
It’s just that everything in between is largely throwaway material. It isn’t of a poor quality per se, so much as playing strictly by the numbers. One also can’t help but feeling that key sequences had been cut out. There’s one scene where Percy buys Maddie a gift that seems to refer to something that we were meant to have seen earlier. (So, look out for that inevitable unrated cut coming to a home release near you).
Indeed, in the hands of a lesser cast it may not have worked at all. Lawrence completely owns her presence as Maddie, a sex-positive character who makes few apologies (and nor does she ever need to). Her comic timing is impeccable, as anybody who has seen her on late night talk shows can attest, and reminds us of praise for the same in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle.
Feldman almost goes too far in the opposite direction, as it is hard to imagine how his character functions from day to day. Indeed, Stupnitsky and co-writer John Phillips are pretty rough on Percy’s whole generation, using a teen party to make some paper thin commentary about ‘overly sensitive’ influencers on phones — or something.
Yet there’s a sweeter core to NO HARD FEELINGS that even a last minute joke about a dick caught in a paper finger trap can’t erase. If this mid-budget comedy reminds you of a bygone era of studio releases, then hopefully any successes it garners will mean a more value placed on character-driven comedies for smaller audiences.
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Gene Stupnitsky | WRITERS: Gene Stupnitsky, John Phillips | CAST: Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, Matthew Broderick | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing | RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 June 2023 (AUS), 23 June 2023 (US)
