Cherry Bomb
No Hard Feelings (2023): 6 our of 10: Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is a thirtysomething Montauk bartender and Uber driver whose car has been repossessed and whose inherited home may be next. Being an Uber driver without a car presents certain career limitations, so she answers a Craigslist ad from wealthy parents offering a Buick Regal to a woman willing to “date” their sheltered nineteen-year-old son. And yes, those quotation marks are doing some heavy lifting.
The parents (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) want Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) to gain some experience with women before heading off to Princeton. Apparently, tuition and a meal plan no longer cover everything. Maddie figures seducing an awkward young man should be a relatively straightforward route to reliable transportation. Percy, however, proves considerably less receptive than her financial planning requires.
What follows is a summer of attempted seduction, generational confusion, and questionable parenting, as a woman struggling with adulthood takes a paying job introducing someone else to it. An eighties sex-comedy premise gets a modern makeover, with a coming-of-age story lurking beneath the promise of bad behavior. All this for a used Buick. Imagine the expectations if they were offering a Lexus.
The Good
The Good: Though No Hard Feelings is a coming of age film and not the daring comedy as advertised, that does not mean it does not have some magnificent set pieces. It also has some excellent acting..
Jennifer Lawrences salary might have been half the budget for this film but she earns it. There is a set piece where a nude Jennifer Lawrence beats up three teenagers trying to steal her clothes on a beach. It is very funny. Not nude wrestling in Borat funny, mind you, but still hilarious.
Some of the supporting actors also bring thier A game including an older good looking Matthew Broadrick as the dad paying to get his son laid before college. And Jennifer’s best friend Natalie Morales encouraging her and berating her for her life choices in equal measure.
The Bad
The Bad: When does No Hard Feelings take place? I mean by the cellphones and dissing Generation Z for being sex free phone addicts, I would think it is in the present day. But the soundtrack is right out of what, 1978? Look, I love Bob Seeger. He reminds me of when I was a kid. But come on, his first hit album came out around the same time Jaws did. He is a seventies act. The song that starts the film, Tommy James’ Draggin’ the Line, came out in 1971. I mean, this is my mom’s music, and I am in my mid fifties. Even Hall & Oates’ Maneater, which somehow is a major plot point of the film, came out a decade before Jennifer Lawrence’s character was even born.
And then we have the plot. This is a bog standard eighties coming of age plot. The closest example might be My Tutor, but this plot is as old as the hills. I have to give No Hard Feelings some credit for trying to resurrect it, but times have changed. Again, I cannot help but think the movie belongs in the late seventies, not 2023.
My girlfriend points out that Jennifer Lawrences character was definitely written by a guy. She didn’t expand on that, but I get what she means. For a movie that pretends to be realistic and down to earth (Though the townies vs the rich newcomers is another plot right out of an eighties comedy) the characters in the film are all underwritten. Not an issue in a fun comedy. No one is really concerned about the character development in Hot Tub Time Machine, for example. But when it is a stealth coming of age film as this is these things can suddenly matter.
The Ugly
The Ugly: Andrew Barth Feldman. Look, I am sure that Andrew is an excellent actor and a wonderful song and dance man. He is completely wrong for this role. Most of the issue is the script. His character has way too much emotional intelligence to be in the situation his parents describe. He looks too young, and the movie makes him too old. He is supposed to be nineteen and I suppose we are supposed to wink back at the filmmakers at the idea that a Princeton bound freshman was held back a year or two at some point during his schooling.
Andrew, however, looks more like a high school freshman than a nineteen-year-old senior. And that could have worked. Had this been a comedy where a desperate Jennifer Lawrence has to date an obviously underaged, oversexed boy that could have been a hilarious comedy. A black and awkward comedy, but funny.
Instead, No hard Feelings wants its cake and eat it too so we are supposed to believe that Jennifer has romantic feelings for Andrew. Lets go back to My Tutor. Not the greatest film ever by any means, but the lead character was definitely still in high school per the script and dad was paying his French tutor a 10k bonus to teach him more than French.
But the high schooler was played by Matt Lattanzi, who was a professional dancer, and who went on to marry Olivia Newton John later that year. He looked about as much a high schooler as Olivia did in Grease. That said, you could certainly understand the French tutor having feelings for him. I mean, lust is a feeling, yes?
No Hard Feelings chooses an awkward middle ground, between My Tutor and Summer of ‘42. I am not sure if anyone could have realistically pulled this role off, but Andrew Barth Feldman certainly could not. He lacks the charisma to be believable as a love interest.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: There are a couple of fun scenes in No Hard Feelings that make it worth the watch. That and a nude Jennifer Lawrence beating up teenagers on a moonlit beach. Plus, it really has a great soundtrack. Not appropriate for the movie, but great. I think they missed an opportunity by not including Cherry Bomb by the Runaways though.
