“Jennifer Lawrence is back!”
That’s what most of the headlines I read about No Hard Feelings proclaimed in the lead up to this week. The prospect of Lawrence’s resurgence combined with the movie’s funny trailer built up some anticipation for me to see it.
No Hard Feelings has a familiar premise: an attractive woman is convinced to date a loser in exchange for something she needs. Hollywood enjoys telling this story. In the 2003 Black classic Love Don’t Cost a Thing (a remake of the 1987 teen comedy Can't Buy Me Love), Christina Milian’s character dates Nick Cannon’s only because he fixed $1,500 worth of damage she wrought on her mother’s Escalade. What’s different in this iteration is the promise of raunchy humor and nudity the movie’s R-rating provides. It seemed like the type of humor found in the movies from the ‘00’s and ‘10’s would be brought back. Not quite…
Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games trilogy) does her best as Maddie, an Uber driver and Montauk native at risk of losing the house she’s lived in virtually her entire life. After getting her car repossessed, Maddie realizes if she doesn’t get a new one on the cheap, she’ll be out of a home. She stumbles upon a Craigslist ad for two parents (Matthew Broderick, Ferris Buellar’s Day Off and Laura Benanti, Tick, Tick... Boom!) willing to sign over their unused Buick if she “dates” their 19-year old virgin son who will be off to begin his college career at Princeton in the fall. Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) has the social skills and autonomy of someone much younger. In Maddie and Percy’s first encounter, he sprays her with mace because he thinks she’s kidnapping her. It will be much tougher to reach her end goal than Maddie bargained for.
No Hard Feelings continues on its predictable path. I don’t have to say how it will play out because you already know where it goes from here, trust me. And unfortunately for a movie that promised a certain level of vulgarity, it’s not funny enough to earn it. Lawrence and Feldman have clear chemistry and the supporting cast that also includes Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) and Hasan Minhaj (Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj) hold up fairly well, but something is missing. The jokes don’t pack a full punch and the moments of sincerity don’t land either. The film’s director Gene Stupnitsky wrote and directed the 2019 comedy Good Boys and wrote Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz in one of the best comedies in the last decade plus, eight years before that — both of which are a class above this one.
Don’t get me wrong, I laughed throughout the screening. I enjoyed seeing Lawrence in this role; she’s great in comedies (see: Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Don’t Look Up). And I can see a future in which Feldman is a more known commodity going forward from here. It’s not a bad movie by any stretch, it’s just not one that I would call good either.
Are you excited to see No Hard Feelings?