“No Hard Feelings” works as a sight-gag driven sex comedy where a punch-in-the-throat paves the way for opposites attracting. When it wants to breathe believability into its main characters with ‘getting-to-know-you’ talks, the movie sucks the oxygen right out of the theater.
Jennifer Lawrence plays 32-year-old Maddie, an uninhibited and independent single girl in Montauk, N.Y. whose seasonal summer work as a bartender/Uber driver covers her expenses for the year. Facing a lien on her house from unpaid property taxes, Maddie becomes desperate when her car gets repossessed. Answering a Craigslist ad from the type of wealthy visitors Maddie reviles by catering to all summer, a Buick Regal will be hers should Maddie “date” socially-stunted 19 year-old Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) before he starts studying at Princeton. So introverted is Percy that Percy’s father Laird (Matthew Broderick) explains to Maddie, “We want you to date him hard.” Having no fear of deflowering a collegiate freshman for a set of wheels, Maddie accepts.
Maddie finds where Percy works, stages a meet-cute, and secures a date where skinny-dipping leads to lap dancing. Percy, oblivious to Maddie’s come-ons, takes each advance as awkwardly adversarial- just giving Percy a ride home leaves Maddie pepper sprayed when Percy thinks he’s being kidnapped.
In their scenes of physical comedy as seductress and simpleton, Lawrence and Feldman excel: you buy the comic conflict between Maddie’s need to succeed and Percy’s purposeful naiveté. Had there been more physicality between the two actors, the vibe of a klutzy connection would have kept “Feelings’” energy up (just think of how Peter Sellers sold the “Pink Panther” franchise with Clouseau’s clumsiness). However, for Maddie and Percy to come together, they have to connect through lengthy conversations that leave the film flat.
“No Hard Feelings” means well by introducing more conflicts to make Maddie and Percy getting together tougher, namely their differences in age and wealth, but never takes full advantage of either. I would have liked seeing situations where Maddie acquiesces to Percy’s youthful interests or has adverse reactions to Percy’s affluence.
While writer/director Gene Stupnitsky (“Good Boys”) chose subtext over situational humor to make Maddy and Percy’s closeness earned and believable, I’d argue I didn’t need a lot of Wile E. Coyote’s back story to figure out why he’d strap himself to an ACME rocket to catch the Road Runner. Overall, Lawrence and Feldman have good comic chemistry in “No Hard Feelings”- the movie just misfires when it wants to inject logic into its built-in lunacy.