Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 43 minutes, Director – Gene Stupnitsky
Desperate to not lose her summer Uber income 32-year-old Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) takes a job to ‘date’ a 19-year-old (Andrew Barth Feldman) and bring him out of his shell before college in order to get a new car.
No Hard Feelings has been billed by some as bringing back the raunchy R-rated summer studio sex comedy. However, what it doesn’t seem to recognise is the fact that this subgenre seemed to fade away largely because such films often felt quite repetitive. That’s somewhat the case here with an added layer of discomfort as 32-year-old Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) attempts to ‘seduce’ 19-year-old Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) in order to bring him out of his shell before college.
For Maddie it’s all about getting a car offered by Percy’s parents (Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick) in exchange for her ‘dating’ their son – she’s desperate to get the summer Uber money from tourists visiting the seaside town where she lives however her own call has been towed due to being behind on rent payments. For Percy he genuinely thinks someone is interested in him. You can’t help but feel sorry for him at times as Lawrence’s character simply seems so annoyed that he won’t have sex with her and keeps rejecting her advances – starting off by unwillingly taking him to her house within half an hour of first meeting.
As the pair get to know each other over the ensuing days Maddie’s attitude may somewhat change but there’s still a slightly uncomfortable nature to a number of her actions. Later developments from around the halfway point when the film realises it needs to rectify this behaviour never quite feel as if they justify what has come beforehand leading to a somewhat lacklustre feel, even more so when paired with little-seen strands such as barely touched suggestions of Maddie’s struggles to commit in previous relationships. Eventually much of the film feels as if it’s trying to rectify and redeem itself from the tone and nature of the first half instead of properly moving things along.
In a number of ways it feels like the central character herself. While clearly putting on a different personality around Percy in order to achieve her goal of making him a man as quick as possible there are a handful of other points where Lawrence appears to be playing a different personality and not in the way the character or film intends. It leads to some odd points where her character’s intentions and mindset don’t quite seem to match what’s come before, or at least aren’t entirely clear – especially standing aside from her general development over the course of the narrative.
While still remembering to bring in some laughs very few of the gags within No Hard Feelings actually take off. Despite how clearly the film has gone for the R rating from the off the best gags are the much simpler ones leaning away from the raunchy nature. The brief lines of dialogue which are inserted into a moment and then moved on from. However, there’s few of these in the largely unamusing 103-minute run-time. The film is so intent on being a big, brash sex comedy that it suddenly realises that it might need to redeem its main character and in a rush to do so begins to lose itself in crossed developments while still continuing with the same, lacking, style of humour.
There’s a tangled nature to No Hard Feelings as it clambers to redeem its central character, and uncomfortable nature, through multiple barely touched details while still continuing its brash sex comedy humour, only really gaining laughs with much simpler gags.
Just A Little Bit Random 