No Hard Feelings, starring a fearless Jennifer Lawrence, features a healthy budget, a unique location (Montauk, New York), discernible characters, a plotline in which said characters learn something about themselves, and it takes place on planet Earth. This is what theatrical films used to look like before we lost them to the malaise of streaming and the Marvel/DC takeover. But Gene Stupnitsky’s comedy is only sporadically funny and you wish he pushed the envelope a little further instead of being satisfied with a sluggish third act. Like hungry dogs in a kettle, the audience chews on every savory human moment, even if there isn’t enough meat on the bone.
Lawrence, who also produced the Sony Pictures-backed vehicle, plays Maddie, an embittered bartender and Uber-driver who pours every cent she makes into the house her mother left her after she died. She could care less about cultivating a relationship with anyone, especially men, who she basically uses for libidinous purposes. She only cares about keeping her house, which becomes an albatross around her neck.
In the opening, Maddie wakes up to her car being towed by an ex-lover, Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who works for the township. She pleads with him to stop, she needs the car for her Uber gig and owes thousands in property taxes, but Gary remains indomitable. Not only did she ghost him after they dated for a few months, he can clearly see her new Italian stallion lover standing behind her.
Broke, tired, and pissed off that her livelihood depends on rich, douchey tourists who spend their summers in Montauk, Maddie discovers a Craigslist ad which could be her saving grace. A wealthy couple (Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick) are offering their family Buick to a young woman who can “date” their introverted, awkward 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), in order to pull him out of his shell before he attends Princeton. Although Maddie is a little older than they hoped, she gets the job and…
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