Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
We love it when a movie star just goes for it. We love it when an A-List personality and very talented actor decides it’s time to say “fuck it” and throws everything against the wall when making a project. And we especially love it when it’s in a HARD R-rated comedy.
“On the brink of losing her home, Maddie finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.”
Director: Gene Stupnitsky
Writers: Gene Stupnitsky, John Phillips
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Matthew Broderick, Natalie Morales, Scott MacArthur
Release Date: June 23, 2023
IMDB
We love it when a movie star just goes for it. We love it when an A-List personality and very talented actor decides it’s time to say “fuck it” and throws everything against the wall when making a project. And we especially love it when it’s in a HARD R-rated comedy.
A genre that has been decreasing in frequency and quality over the course of the last decade got a bit of a revival this summer with No Hard Feelings (2023). Jennifer Lawrence takes her Oscar worthy talents and funnels them into a shameless and hilarious vat of relatable deplorability. Hell, the Golden Globes say this performance is award worthy!
The plot is rather simple. Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is a down on her luck waterside resident looking to survive on the minimal income she is earning as an Uber driver and bartender. One of her means of money is towed away at the start of the film, making Maddie even more desperate.
In an effort to earn more income, Maddie takes on a job shown to her by her friend Sara (Natalie Morales). The job? Date, and “date hard”, a young high school man by the name of Percy Becker (Andrew Barth Feldman). And who is hiring Maddie for this task? None other than Percy’s worrying parents Allison (Laura Benanti) and Laird (Matthew Broderick).
With the mission assigned, Maddie pulls out all the traditional stops to try and seduce Percy. She shows up to his work, flirts relentlessly, and tries to make her objective as obvious as possible. Percy, being a little bit of an awkward boy, doesn’t know how to respond. There are a series of bad dates followed by even more disastrously traumatizing events, but eventually Maddie and Percy begin to develop an actual friendship.
Such endearing behavior can’t last, not in a debaucherous movie like No Hard Feelings. Things take a turn for the worse as the blissful and educational relationship between Maddie and Percy hits more than a few pitfalls. Lessons are learned and new values are discovered. But be assured, No Hard Feelings never loses its hard R-rated edge as the credits approach.
To sum it all up real fast, No Hard Feelings is funny. The movie has slapstick, awkward and clever humor all wrapped in a burrito of zaniness. And the filling that kept the whole enchilada together is none other than Jennifer Lawrence. You can’t turn off No Hard Feelings and not be impressed by Lawrence. While the character of Maddie is attractive, the part itself is not pretty. The character makes a complete fool of herself with the utmost confidence and Lawrence has the self-esteem to have all the eyes on her while she is literally bearing it all.
Now, let’s talk about director and writer Gene Stupnitsky for a second. This man has directed two rated R comedies, both of which have been received remarkably well by audiences and critics.
Stupnitsky broke onto the scene from The Office directing brigade and then made us all fall in love with drug dealing middle school youths with Good Boys (2019). The unlikely young comedic trio of Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams and Brady Noon were unbelievably funny reading and acting out lines they knew absolutely nothing about.
No Hard Feelings (2023) raises the age of innocence to high school, yet it still shares many of the same hallmarks. The main male characters are rather dumb and Stupnitsky is not shy about making them look like fools. Both movies have sex and illegal activities for the comedy, yet it’s not the true motivation for the movie. Sure, the Becker parents want their son to have sex, but Percy isn’t all about that. He is poisoned by the predicament he was put into. Both No Hard Feelings and Good Boys make the characters likable and unrelentingly rootable, making their eventual satisfying endings even more smile-inducing.
And then there is the fact that both of Stupnitsky’s movies have one absolutely off-the-wall scene that immediately becomes water cooler fodder. There is no questioning what scene this is in No Hard Feeling.
Watching Jennifer Lawrence beat the shit out of stupid high school kids while completely naked is something no one was expecting. At the top I mentioned how important it is to have an actor go far it, and fuck does Lawrence go for it. She did all of her own nudity scenes and she did it with fantastic non-sexual confidence. The character of Maddie doesn’t take shit. She is pulling off wrestling moves and dispensing crotch shots with reckless abandon.
An arousing round of applause. A standing ovation. The ultimate Fuck It moment from both a story and acting standpoint.
For the record, the most ridiculous scene in Good Boys is when they try to buy drugs from a frat house and begin a paintball war scene. Great stuff.
And one more point in Stupnitsky’s column. Some people were criticizing the age difference between Maddie and Percy. Stupnitsky politely told everyone to shut up. Stupnistky points out The Graduate (1967) which is one of cinema’s most famous awkward romantic comedies, and then doubles down with Silver Linings Playbook (2012) where Lawrence and Bradley Cooper’s characters are 15 years apart.
Love a polite shut down.
Just some other tid-bits before I wrap up this far longer than expected reflection on No Hard Feelings.
As of January 2024, No Hard Feelings is streaming on Netflix.
STANKO RATING: B
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