Since her breakout year in 2012 playing Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and winning an Academy Award for Silver Linings Playbook, Jennifer Lawrence has achieved commercial and critical success in drama, thriller and action roles, but one genre has alluded her so far. For all her jokes during award shows and interviews, oddly, Lawrence had yet to take a cinematic turn using her wit and comedic timing — until now. Billed as the long-lost R-rated comedy, No Hard Feelings is part coming-of-age comedy, part rom-com, part Gen Z senior-year romp, and part millennial "lol we're so old" quips. It's effectively, a film meant for everyone and no one at the same time, with a few chuckles for the road.
Living in Montauk, NY, her whole life, Maddie (Lawrence) has an uneasy relationship with the countless tourists who flock to the picturesque hamlet for the summer. On one hand, bartending and driving an Uber in the summer is how she "makes her nut" for the year, and on the other, she can't stand the way the summering rich elites treat her and other locals. So when she's faced with the prospect of losing her house due to increasing property taxes, she considers a Craiglist posting from a well-to-do family as her way of taking advantage of them just as they all do to her.
The post was made by Laird and Allison Becker (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti), a couple of comically liberal helicopter parents who are concerned that their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is too sheltered, shy and uninterested to safely go to college. In the hopes of getting Percy out of his shell, Laird and Allison ask the internet for help, seeking an early-to-mid-20-year-old to "date" their son.
No Hard Feelings looks, sounds and feels like a high school party movie, with Percy going through the common tropes of the genre, growing in confidence with a desire for independence. But the film's focus is on Maddie's come up as she ponders her own future and the burdensome demons that hold her back, begging the question: who is this movie for?
The observations about incessantly being on the phone and recording every misstep of strangers (including Maddie making a joke considered off-colour and homophobic today, but perfectly laughable in her youth) are decidedly millennial fodder, yet the crass nature of much of the comedy feels slightly juvenile for a generation wondering why their backs are in a perpetual state of sore. There are some humorous moments where Lawrence is given a chance to show off her physical comedy stylings, from a simple gag of Maddie climbing up steps in roller blades to being punched in the vagina while stark naked.
Lawrence is one of our generation's most dynamic and adept actors, and she's able to deliver heart and levity at just the right times, even with a script that does none of the cast any favours. It's no wonder she cultivated the fan base she did in the 2010s as the talented beauty whose self-deprecating humour and personable nature revealed a clumsy, no-bullshit girl next door. Lawrence meant something to a generation who saw her as the perfect example of the imperfect millennial movie star — and in No Hard Feelings, Lawrence takes a gamble on deciding just how much they've grown (or not), hedging her bets by attempting to appeal to younger fans along the way.
(Sony Pictures)Living in Montauk, NY, her whole life, Maddie (Lawrence) has an uneasy relationship with the countless tourists who flock to the picturesque hamlet for the summer. On one hand, bartending and driving an Uber in the summer is how she "makes her nut" for the year, and on the other, she can't stand the way the summering rich elites treat her and other locals. So when she's faced with the prospect of losing her house due to increasing property taxes, she considers a Craiglist posting from a well-to-do family as her way of taking advantage of them just as they all do to her.
The post was made by Laird and Allison Becker (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti), a couple of comically liberal helicopter parents who are concerned that their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is too sheltered, shy and uninterested to safely go to college. In the hopes of getting Percy out of his shell, Laird and Allison ask the internet for help, seeking an early-to-mid-20-year-old to "date" their son.
No Hard Feelings looks, sounds and feels like a high school party movie, with Percy going through the common tropes of the genre, growing in confidence with a desire for independence. But the film's focus is on Maddie's come up as she ponders her own future and the burdensome demons that hold her back, begging the question: who is this movie for?
The observations about incessantly being on the phone and recording every misstep of strangers (including Maddie making a joke considered off-colour and homophobic today, but perfectly laughable in her youth) are decidedly millennial fodder, yet the crass nature of much of the comedy feels slightly juvenile for a generation wondering why their backs are in a perpetual state of sore. There are some humorous moments where Lawrence is given a chance to show off her physical comedy stylings, from a simple gag of Maddie climbing up steps in roller blades to being punched in the vagina while stark naked.
Lawrence is one of our generation's most dynamic and adept actors, and she's able to deliver heart and levity at just the right times, even with a script that does none of the cast any favours. It's no wonder she cultivated the fan base she did in the 2010s as the talented beauty whose self-deprecating humour and personable nature revealed a clumsy, no-bullshit girl next door. Lawrence meant something to a generation who saw her as the perfect example of the imperfect millennial movie star — and in No Hard Feelings, Lawrence takes a gamble on deciding just how much they've grown (or not), hedging her bets by attempting to appeal to younger fans along the way.
