No Hard Feelings, the new sex comedy from director and co-writer Gene Stupnitsky, shrewdly combines two strains of generational angst. Its protagonist is a classic millennial, paralyzed by indecision and unwilling to move beyond what’s comfortable, while her “love interest” is an overly parented Gen Zer who is a couple YouTube sessions from becoming a full-bore incel. The word “love interest” is a loose because the premise takes a spin on a classic romcom formula, except Stupnitsky correctly realizes the generational gap means they cannot live happily ever after. Instead, he finds more dramatically satisfying conclusions for his likable heroes, imbuing his film with more thought and care than you might expect. It is only a shame he cannot apply the same care to the comedy: for every effective comic scene, including some there are genuinely shocking, there are others that have clunky staging and ineffective punchlines.
Jennifer Lawrence stars as Maddie, a 32-year-old Uber driver in Montauk who is delinquent on property tax payments. The tax man seizes her car, and bartender shifts are not enough to pay the bills, so she pores over Craigslist and finds an intriguing arrangement. Two affluent parents (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) worry about their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), an awkward 19-year-old who is about to start at Princeton. The parents figure Percy only needs someone to help him out of his shell, so they hire Maddie to “date” him in exchange for the Buick sitting in their driveway (with no car, she takes her roller blades to their gorgeous summer home). The mutually understood subtext is that Maddie will deflower the kid, something the script handles with a mix of frank dialogue and shyness. Those qualities continue as Maddie begins seducing Percy, discovering she kind of likes him along the way.
At first, Maddie’s approach to get Percy’s attention is all wrong. She goes to the pet shelter where he volunteers, dressed as an extra in a bad porno, and poses in a way to suggest that she’s ready to party. For a kid like him, who spends all his time in his room, he needs a gentler approach, maybe a riff on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliché, except slightly more realistic. The contrived nature of their early scenes is where No Hard Feelings stumbles most, with Maddie throwing herself to no avail, and at least it leads somewhere inevitable, yet unexpected: in a moment of raw terror, he pepper sprays her on her front lawn. But Maddie is undeterred, and soon her softened approach starts to work. By the time Percy thinks he is in love, of course, she has second thoughts.
To his credit, Stupnitsky seems to realize this story does not withstand much scrutiny. His solution to create a backdrop where real issues – economic inequality, embarrassment and grief – make the characters behave so strangely. At the edge of Long Island, Montauk is a community well beyond gentrification: the ultra-wealthy sweep in because it’s marginally less expensive than the Hamptons, and locals like Maddie are being pushed out. This gives Maddie a sense of resentment, and a desire to take from the rich whenever she can. Percy has privilege in all this, though he is not complicit in it, which is perhaps why the two end up liking each other. There is a ring of truth to the common ground they find: they are not peers, and that remove creates a possibility for disarming honesty. They both confide in each other, signaling they are generational stand-ins, and that vulnerability serves as ammunition for when Percy learns the truth.
Lawrence co-produced this film, and given her meme-able off-the-cuff moments, it is surprising this is her first full-on comedy. Unlike last year’s Causeway, which mutes her innate charisma, here she leans into that quality with a character who is half sexpot, half klutz. As Percy, Feldman’s arc is more familiar, albeit with a gender reversal. Instead of something like She’s All That, where the dorky girl takes off her glasses and lets her hair down, we have a dorky guy who gets a better haircut and learns proper posture. They also get an assist from a group of reliable supporting actors, including the seemingly ubiquitous Ebon Moss-Bachrach as a tow truck operator, and Natalie Morales in the thankless best friend role. Everyone gets a punch line or two, but more importantly, they create a sense of community where this kind of dubious, under-the-table financial transaction might happen.
In an era where social media questions the need for sex scenes seemingly every other week, No Hard Feelings finds unexpected ways where sex and nudity advance the plot. Aside from Maddie’s failed seduction attempts and Percy’s newfound confidence, sometimes that brazen display can be both shocking and funny. One scene in particular may cause mouths to drop, an impromptu fight scene that is equal parts well-choreographed and vulgar. Maybe even word-of-mouth will get people in theaters, as opposed to posting shitty clips on TikTok or whatever. Either way, the scene demonstrates what a sex comedy can accomplish when it is firing on all cylinders, a marked improvement over a repeated gag of Maddie trudging through Montauk on roller blades.
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures
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