"No Hard Feelings" lets Jennifer Lawrence get bawdy in surprisingly sweet sex comedy

No Hard Feelings (2023) 

Jennifer Lawrence seems true to her likable, you-want-to-be-her-friend persona. Off-screen, she has proven her ace comic timing and an acerbic, unfiltered sense of humor. It’s kind of a surprise, then, that “No Hard Feelings” is her first R-rated comedy. The versatile Lawrence is as much of a natural in letting loose and being profane as she is in bringing emotional depth to a hard-hitting drama or a YA dystopian franchise. Reminiscent of the high-concept sex comedies from the ‘80s that then bled into the early aughts (i.e. “The Girl Next Door”), this is a welcome return to comedies that aren’t afraid to shake up good taste but are also big softies underneath.

 

Lawrence plays Maddie Barker, an employed but aimless 32-year-old Montauk townie still living in the childhood home her late mother left her. She works as a bartender and an Uber driver but has no car from failing to pay her property taxes and having it repossessed (by one of her many exes no less). In hopes of saving her house, Maddie answers a very weird Craigslist ad from well-to-do helicopter parents (played by a game Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti). She’s upfront about not being a professional sex worker, but all she has to do is “date” their awkward, sheltered, risk-averse 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) before he heads off to Princeton. In exchange, Maddie gets the title to their Buick Regal. 

There is a class-conscious underpinning to Maddie’s living/financial situation that makes the film wiser than it needs to be, but that’s not really why we’re here. With a potentially creepy or wrongheaded premise, writer-director Gene Stupnitsky (of the much-more-ribald but equally sweet “Good Boys”) and co-writer John Phillips altogether handle it with more charm, smarts, and sensitivity than expected. Naturally, we know this “relationship” can’t last because Maddie isn’t a total monster and Percy isn’t completely clueless, either. Even if Maddie and Percy don’t have sex, there is actually hope that they can forge a true friendship. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com.

Grade: B 

Sony Pictures Releasing released "No Hard Feelings" (103 min.) in theaters on June 23, 2023.