‘No Hard Feelings’ Review Brilliant Comedic Performance From Jennifer Lawrence

The perception of this film may have been a little misleading. With the marketing and trailers suggesting this would be a gross-out comedy and something of a throwback that wouldn’t be out of place in the 90’s. When in fact it doesn’t really have much shock value and is not particularly raunchy.

It is provocative, there is an age gap between the main characters, there’s full frontal nudity and it can be slapstick at times. But actually this has a lot more heart than I thought it would and that is due to Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. She is naturally funny and witty, her personality is perfect for these types of roles. She performs the physical comedy perfectly, but it’s her dramatic acting skills that gives the film heart.

The humour in No Hard Feelings is dry and awkward and you can see Gene Stupnitsky has taken influence from his time on The Office.

Lawrence plays Maddie a 32 year old Uber driver who has her car towed after not keeping up with the repayments. She is also struggling to keep up with the area’s rising property taxes and is now at risk of losing her late mother’s home. 

Unable to work due to her transportation issues, she stumbles across an advert from a wealthy couple (Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick.) They want to find an attractive women to date their introverted son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), to bring him out of his shell before he goes to Princeton University. In exchange she will be given a second-hand Buick.

Maddie comes on strong and the chronically awkward Percy struggles to deal with her advances. There is a class and generational gap between the pair as Maddie doesn’t understand why the 19 year old doesn’t drink, party or even drive.

The physical comedy is immaculate Lawrence has an incredible ability to come across as extremely confident but also very dorky, as we see her painfully stomp up the steps to Percy’s house in rollerblades or try to be sexy as she drags a couch across the room.

Feldman’s performance is more subtle and he does a really good job standing up to Lawrence’s energizer bunny aura. Albeit a very clumsy defense to Maddie’s initial advances, his comedic timing is perfect and he maintains Percy’s innocence throughout.

The film is much more warm hearted than the promotion ever suggested. As we see the layers peeled back from both characters, they bond and develop a friendship based on the fact that they’re actually both very lonely people.

This is where Jennifer Lawrence’s dramatic chops come in and the switch from her character being brash and sexual, to being open and vulnerable is a testament to her acting. There aren’t many that can do what she does.

Although this is not the boundary pushing, raunchy comedy it was built up to be. It is still a brave attempt in todays climate of oversensitivity. It will probably still offend some people, but overall I did not feel like it pushed too hard.

Both leads are excellent, but this film is all Jennifer Lawrence. She carries it from start to finish and if this is a genre she sticks with in the future, it’s a great start.

You can watch No Hard Feelings in theaters now.