No Hard Feelings
This movie doesn’t hold a grudge, but I do.
Andrew Barth Feldman and Jennifer Lawrence have No Hard Feelings about being stuck in Gene Stupnitsky's lackluster comedy.
Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is getting priced out of her home. As millionaires buy up parcels of land on Montauk and build lavish homes, Maddie’s property taxes hike, and her jobs as an Uber driver and bartender no longer keep her head above water.
Faced with a massive IRS debt and a repossessed car, Maddie is going to have to get creative if she wants to keep the family home.
Luckily for her, there is nothing rich parents won’t do for their kids.
She spots an ad begging for a nice girl to date a couple’s dweeby son. It seems Laura and Laird Becker (Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick) are terribly worried about their beloved son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman). Smart but socially awkward, Percy has barely spoken to girls let alone dated one. The Beckers feel that hiring someone to date (read: sleep with) their 19-year-old will help him as he prepares to go to college. The payment? An old Buick, because millionaires figured out the value of their son’s virginity via CARFAX.
But beggars can’t be choosers, and Maddie needs a car if she’s going to pay off her debts and save her house. So, she sets off to date and deflower Percy. Only…Percy is resistant to her charms.
Can Maddie bang a high schooler for a 1990s Buick? Will having sex make Percy a more rounded individual? Where’s Chris Hansen when you need him?
Jennifer Lawrence is usually pretty serious. She’s either fighting oppressive governments in the Hunger Games, skinning squirrels for dinner, or dealing with depression through dance. So it makes sense that she’d like to show off her comedic prowess and take a break from the doom and gloom movies. What doesn’t make sense is why she’d pick such a stale, cringey comedy.
No Hard Feelings feels like a dusty VHS tape you’d find on the shelf of an Airbnb. And while it is certainly courting the raunchy comedy aesthetic of the 80s, it’s neither shocking nor funny. The whole thing feels like a rejected Goldie Hawn project that someone fed into ChatGPT so it could add smartphones and references to helicopter parents. The jokes are dumb. The characters don’t make any sense. The whole premise, which could be funny if anyone cared to attempt satire, is just sort of splatted onto the screen with no thought. It’s not half-baked, it’s not even the ingredients.
While technically a film, No Hard Feelings is really pushing the definition. The editing is jarring. Scenes just sort of happen, with no real transition or flow. Background characters pop in and out with no rhyme or reason (keep your eyes on the background in the animal shelter and be amazed at the ghost customer that just materializes!). It feels like production had enough budget for one take of every scene and director Gene Stupnitsky sort of shrugged and tossed the footage to an editor while wishing them the best of luck.
There are a few ideas teased in the premise that could have been interesting. Helicopter parents, isolation of youth (especially young men), rich land owners pricing people out of their homes — all of these topics are raised and immediately abandoned. A more interesting and subversive comedy might have dug deeper, plumbing those topics for some outrageous comedy, but hey, who’s got time for thought when we can have Lawrence fall down?
The most offensive part of the film, however, is how blandly inoffensive it is. Stupnitsky had more daring comedy in his last film (Good Boys). There’s a naked fight that earns points for not objectifying a nude woman, but for the most part, every joke you see is something that’s already been featured in American Pie, Neighbors, or Bachelor Party. Sitting through the experience is like having a drunk friend tell you the plot of Animal House — you’ll get a few jokes, but mostly you’re just hoping the story will end. It’s the echo of a raunchy comedy, but beyond a few laughs earned by Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur’s fractious couple, there’s nothing to hear.
Even on paper, the characters don’t make sense. Maddie is supposed to be a surfer who dreams of California beaches. We know this because it’s mentioned once and Maddie makes a mobile for her best friend. Lawrence never actually touches a surfboard. She gets near the ocean a few times in a rash guard, and that’s probably good enough for the level of thought this movie has. She’s also 32 but never heard of anime because she’s a mean cheerleader from Revenge of the Nerds. Lawrence has always been gifted at physical comedy, and she does fall like a pro several times in this flick, but it’s a shame that she’s got so little to work with to make Maddie funny or interesting.
As for Percy…he’s every nerd stereotype, but his social anxiety is either a serious thing for Maddie to pity him over or nonexistent. He breaks into hives in some difficult situations (well, once), but he’s fine when security boots him from an arcade or talking to a female classmate. His crippling anxiety keeps him from ever playing the piano outside of his room until he gives a full-blown Hall and Oates concert in the middle of a restaurant after demurring once. It begins to feel like Percy was fine, but Maddie keeps holding him back from normal interactions.
Much like the gender-swapped remake of Overboard, No Hard Feelings feels like an attempt to capitalize on nostalgia without putting any effort into earning your money. I will be truthful and let you know that the audience at my screening laughed and gasped at all the appropriate places, but there were some long lulls where we all just quietly waited for the bit to be over. If you’re the type of person who seeks out Adam Sandler’s Made-For-Netflix movies, this might be worth a watch, but if you’re looking for something genuinely entertaining, check out The Blackening, which manages to be funny and incisive.
Verdict: This movie was made to be background noise while you do household chores.
No Hard Feelings is rated R and available in theaters June 22.
