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No Hard Feelings (R16, 104mins) Directed by Gene Stupnitsky ***½
Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) needs money – and fast.
Montauk born-and-bred, the 32-year-old might have been left a house by her late mother, but the unpaid property taxes are starting to pile up.
Normally, she’d be looking at taking advantage of the village’s summer season tourists, but a court order for the seizure of her car means she can’t supplement her meagre bartending income with Uber moonlighting. And after a rather misguided attempt to liberate her vehicle from the tow truck while wearing rollerskates, Maddie is becoming increasingly desperate.
“You could sell your kidney, your hair, your eggs,” friend Jim (Scott McArthur) rather unhelpfully suggests, as she browses Craigslist (the US equivalent of Trade Me) for solutions. One ad almost immediately catches her eye.
Although she initially dismisses it as a joke, a parental plea for someone to “date” their “quiet, kind, intellectual” 19-year-old son and “bring him out of his shell” before he attends Princeton University in a few months starts to grow on her – especially when they’re offering a Buick Regal in exchange.
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Jennifer Lawrence is starring in her first “raunchy” comedy but wouldn’t give much away about the very cheeky “surprise” scene in No Hard Feelings at it’s UK Premiere in London’s Leicester Square. .
Although Alison (Laura Benanti) and Laird Becker (a hideously bemulleted Matthew Broderick) have reservations about Maddie’s age, she assures them that’s actually an advantage because maternity means, “I have the tact and sensitivity the situation requires”.
Cue her engineering a “meet cute” at the animal shelter where Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) volunteers, making him feel “special” from the moment she opens their conversation with, “mind if I touch your weiner?”, as he clutches a dachshund.
However, somewhat unnerved by her forthright approach, Percy mistakes her offer of a lift home in a panel van she’s borrowed from Jim as an attempt to kidnap him and the afternoon ends with her being maced, only salvaging the situation by getting him to agree to have a proper date the following day.
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Andrew Barth Feldman stars opposite Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings.
Although it starts out rather saltily and raunchy, No Hard Feelings is actually a surprisingly sweet and not-quite-so-shallow-as-the-trailler-suggested tale (there’s also far more car-nage than one could ever have imagined).
Writer and co-director Gene Stupnitsky (The Office US, Jury Duty) has form here, his last feature, 2019’s Good Boys focusing on a trio of intermediate age students who find themselves in some very adult situations and adroitly navigating the fine-line between edgy humour and straight-out bad taste.
If that was this generation’s Milk Money or Superbad, then this is 2023’s answer to There’s Something About Mary or American Pie, a tale filled with truly memorable set-pieces (an eye-popping beach fight, not one, but two car bonnet rides), colourful supporting characters (here Maddie has a succession of oddball ex-boyfriends and Percy has a very protective nanny) and that has something to say about the kids, young adults and the America of today (and not much of it is kind).
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Although it starts out rather saltily and raunchy, No Hard Feelings is actually a surprisingly sweet and not-quite-so-shallow-as-the-trailler-suggested tale.
As with many US comedies of the ‘90s and noughties, it champions an ‘80s pop-music classic – in this case it’s Hall & Oates’ Maneater, which you will likely never be able to listen to in the same way again – and definitely pushes the boundaries in terms of its expletives and nudity.
But although not everything in No Hard Feelings works (there are some distinctly single-dimensional antagonists and the narrative get a little muddy and muddled towards the end) – one thing most definitely does – Lawrence.
If Red Sparrow and The Hunger Games franchise showed that she could pull off action sequences with aplomb, then this showcases her gifts as a physical comedian. It’s a vampy, fearless performance that definitely has echoes of Cameron Diaz in Mary, but if she had been that film’s main character.
Between this and last year’s excellent Causeway, Lawrence has not only showed why we missed her when she was off-screen, but also that she is most definitely back – and perhaps even better than ever.
No Hard Feelings is now screening in cinemas nationwide.
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