No Hard Feelings: A Solid Comedy With Star Power

In the age of streaming, the theatrical R-rated comedy has almost entirely gone away. A lot of the major studios believe that these films belong on a streaming service to watch at home, rather than on a large screen with an expensive theatrical run and the related marketing costs. Fortunately, Sony has decided to give No Hard Feelings a theatrical release, and it is definitely amusing enough to warrant seeing in a theater.

No Hard Feelings follows Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), an Uber driver and bartender whose car gets repossessed as she is nearing a deadline to repay her back property taxes. She finds out about an ad on Craigslist in which parents are looking for a woman to help their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) come out of his shell before he goes away to college in the fall in exchange for a car. Natalie Morales, Matthew Broderick, and Laura Benanti also star.

The real strength of the film comes from the chemistry between Lawrence and Feldman who manage to do a lot with a lackluster script. The comedic moments that land really land because of the pair’s comedic timing. The way the dynamic flips between the two is also fairly unique where sometimes Maddie is the straight man to the ridiculous antics of Percy and sometimes Percy is reacting to Maddie.

Where the film falls short is the narrative and character development, both of which are relegated to the back seat in favor of the comedic moments. Reasonably early on into the “relationship” between Maddie and Percy, Percy has one line that tells the viewer exactly what the rest of the narrative arc is going to be, and the film does not do anything to try and subvert expectations. In fact, once the movie fully leans into this direction, it becomes a little big of a slog because the viewer is just waiting for the comedic aspects that are inevitably coming to arrive. It is also at this point where the film transitions from a raunchy comedy to more of a rom-com which is a little tonally jarring.

No Hard Feelings is entertaining enough and has enough heart where it is worth watching in a theater. Outside of the experience itself, it also showcases the power of packaging and the star power of Jennifer Lawrence because not many other actresses attached to a comedy like this would lead to a four-way bidding war between Universal, Apple, Netflix, and Sony. It is also worth noting that despite taking place in Montauk, the film was shot in Nassau County.

Final Rating: 7/10