Once a multiplex staple, the R-rated sex comedy has all but vanished from the American cinematic landscape. Fresh off her well-received performance in last year’s sober PTSD drama Causeway, Jennifer Lawrence aims to resurrect the bawdy subgenre with No Hard Feelings, a smutty lark that ably proves her movie-star magnetism. No amount of marquee charisma, however, can salvage Jury Duty co-creator Gene Stupnitsky’s flaccid feature film, which exhibits a superficial interest in ribald revelry and yet, in most respects, neuters its wilder impulses.
On the surface, there’s nothing restrained about Maddie Barker (Lawrence), a lifelong resident of beautiful Montauk, Long Island, whose quiet and quaint atmosphere has—to her great annoyance—been ruined by an influx of snobby upper-crust outsiders. Encountering one such prick at the waterfront bar where she works, Maddie is outright combative, underlining her brash take-no-shit attitude. When not tussling with strangers who rub her the wrong way, she lives alone in her deceased mother’s house, albeit potentially not for long; due to overdue taxes, she’s on the verge of losing the place.
That beloved abode is just about the only thing Maddie cares about keeping, since as an early encounter with her ex Gary (The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach) indicates, she has a nasty habit of ghosting any boyfriend who gets too close to her, much less dares utter those three dreaded words of commitment, “I love you.”
Upon having her car repossessed, Maddie—who also earns a living as an Uber driver—finds herself in desperate straits. Her prospects take a turn for the better, though, when she discovers an ad placed by a well-to-do couple (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) who are offering their Buick Regal to any young woman willing to date their nerdy, antisocial 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), whom they believe needs some genuine life experiences before heading off to Princeton University in the fall.
Concerned that his sheltered and awkward boy has never had a drink or a kiss, Broderick’s dad commands Maddie to “date him hard!” She agrees on the spot, figuring—as she explains to her bland married-and-expecting best friends Sara (Natalie Morales) and Jim (Scott MacArthur)—that this job will be no different than any of her numerous other one-night stands, except that in this case, she’ll come out of it with a ride.
No Hard Feelings’ conceit is at once old-fashioned (boys sleeping with prostitutes in order to become “men” has long been a cliché) and preposterous. Yet Stupnitsky and John Phillips’ script moves swiftly enough to help sell it as a ridiculous jumping-off point for risqué hilarity. On her employers’ suggestion, Maddie visits Percy at the animal shelter where he volunteers and quickly discovers that her form-fitting pink dress, wavy Veronica Lake hair, and unsubtle come-ons (“Mind if I touch your wiener?”) aren’t sufficient to immediately entice the teenager, whose dorkiness is matched by his all-consuming terror of everything and anything.
Persistence winds up being Maddie’s sole avenue for seduction, and the film’s initial energy comes from the material’s obvious contrasts: between Maddie’s attractiveness and goofiness, as well as between Percy’s miraculous good fortune and total inability to comprehend it.
No Hard Feelings hinges on both the chemistry shared by Lawrence and Feldman, and on its skill at concocting outrageous scenarios and, with them, giddy momentum. It’s successful when it comes to the former, as the headliners are different enough to generate early friction, if also similarly earnest and sensitive, thereby making their inevitable closeness feel like more than merely a contrivance.
That’s a not-inconsiderable feat, given that the screenplay clunkily reveals that both Maddie and Percy are bonded by a kindred fear of taking risks, stepping out of their comfort zones, and leaving home. When, during one particularly swanky date, Percy plays an impromptu piano rendition of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater,” Lawrence’s touched reaction is so amusingly persuasive that it almost makes one feel invested in this mismatched-duo’s budding relationship.
There are plenty of additional moments that tug at the aww-shucks heartstrings, and surprisingly, those are superior to the proceedings’ stabs at outlandishness. No Hard Feelings tries its best to indulge in extreme absurdity, whether it’s a nude Maddie battling a trio of clothes-stealing beach punks, Percy accidentally clobbering his would-be paramour in the throat, or Maddie failing to turn Percy on with an erotic lap dance and, instead, settling for bouncing him on her knee like a child.
Such gestures, alas, are crazier in theory than in execution, in large part because they never build to a wacko peak. There’s something decidedly muted about Stupnitsky’s staging of these wannabe-jaw-dropping incidents, which peter out almost as soon as they began—a situation that parallels Percy’s own eventual performance in the bedroom.
Lawrence enthusiastically embodies Maddie as a sexpot who, beneath her alluring exterior, is a clumsy and desperate loner who’s petrified of becoming attached (as illustrated by her dislike of finger traps). Screaming and threatening, fuming and making funny faces, the star is easily the highlight of No Hard Feelings, and her rapport with Feldman does much to make the film a mildly pleasant diversion.
She’s undercut, however, by a dearth of legitimate madness. Choice one-liners are in short supply, as are unexpected interpersonal dynamics or off-the-wall feats and misadventures. Stupnitsky so frequently pulls his punches and dips into sweetness that the affair’s loud-and-proud lewd act feels insincere. The same goes for his wan attempts at eat-the-rich humor, which fall flat and are quickly dispatched in favor of ho-hum hijinks involving police chases, mace attacks, car crashes and retired police dogs that go nuts at the sound of the word “cocaine.”
Less bawdy than syrupy, No Hard Feelings comes across as a studio effort seemingly afraid to let loose, lest it be criticized for too brazenly having fun with its quasi-inappropriate May-December romance. Maddie and Percy’s exploits are consistently tame, and the absence of entertaining (or even notable) supporting players—a must-have for any endeavor such as this—only further sabotages the action’s liveliness. Playing it safe, it’s a sex comedy that never turns up the heat.
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