The Pitch: When we first meet Montauk townie and Uber driver Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence), she’s getting her car towed. She hasn’t been paying her taxes and the bills are racking up, so she’s forced to get a little “creative” with how she earns her livelihood — or find a way to get a car for cheap.
She stumbles upon a Craigslist post from two wealthy helicopter parents (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti), who want to hire a woman to “date” their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) and instill him with more confidence and drive before he heads off to Princeton in the fall. In return, they’ll offer her a 20-year-old Buick, which will allow her to profit off of the tourist-heavy Long Island summer and save her late mother’s house (it’s a really nice house).
Directed and co-written by Gene Stupnitsky, who is no stranger to coming-of-age films, sex comedies, or otherwise awkward-but-raunchy fare, No Hard Feelings is intended to be a fun and flirty rom-com that highlights Jennifer Lawrence’s comedic prowess. And while Lawrence is certainly funny in the film, it ends up being a really wonderful showcase for Andrew Barth Feldman, who began his professional career at 16 with a leading role in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway. As for the loaded concept of a 32-year-old woman taking a 19-year-old’s virginity just for a car, well, the filmmakers have an answer for that: Don’t sweat it!
They Don’t Make ‘Em Like This Anymore: Some of the more interesting choices in No Hard Feelings lie simply in the style and genre of the film. In 2023, the days of the hyper-masculine studio sex comedies are (deservingly) long gone — films like Road Trip or Sex Drive or even Stupnitsky’s own Bad Teacher feel wildly out of place in our current entertainment landscape, especially considering the way our culture has transformed to hold very detailed, developed ideas around sexual politics. We’ve moved on from men depicting rampant horniness as a comedic tool, because in the real world, rampant straight male horniness can be perceived as a legitimate threat.
So, No Hard Feelings attempts to revive aspects of the genre while also trying to turn some of these “male gaze” moments on their head. When Maddie first tries to seduce the very shy, introverted Percy, she assumes that any straight teenage boy would be falling at her feet — so she styles herself in a bombshell outfit, comes on very strong, and tries to get the sex part of it over with as soon as she can.
But what she doesn’t realize is that it’s actually normal for Percy to feel intimidated and overwhelmed by her advances. For Percy and his generation, sex, intimacy, and connection are loaded, almost ethereal concepts — and with so much of their social experiences taking place online or virtually, it’s less emotionally risky to stay inside and pine than to put themselves out there. For the millennial Maddie, sex is transactional, and she feels like Percy (and men in general) would have no problem subscribing to that belief. But Percy is not coming of age in the boom of “hookup culture,” and sex means something much more vulnerable — so, he requires that they get to know each other and form a connection before he “puts out.”
No Hard Feelings (Sony)
