K.T Simpson
After rounding up rascally teens – and some slightly older ages keen for a guiltless adult chuckle – with Universal’s R-rated comedy Good Boys, Sony port Gene Stupnitsky over to Culver City to see if he can’t get their immobile adult comedy range going again with No Hard Feelings.
Essentially a riff on 80s classics like Risky Business and Can’t Buy Me Love, but with a scene-stealing and surprisingly brave headline turn from an Oscar winner (Jennifer Lawrence), the film sees a couple of broken souls finding opportunity finding one another thanks to Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick is in it, playing the pop) in a story purportedly inspired by a real Craig’s list ad.
Lawrence is the wacky, fly-by-the-sea of the pants 32 year-old who answers an ad from the immoral parents (Broderick and Laura Benati) of a teenager, whose virginity and awkwardness they seemingly find detesting. The ad promises one lucky young woman – clearly they’re looking for someone more their sons age, 19 – a car in exchange for dating (“dating hard”) their son (wonderfully played by Andrew Barth Feldman).
Guess the rest.
The first three quarters of the film are a riot – Farrelly Brothers’ style crudity meets ‘oh no they didn’t!’ sex gags that’ll have you in stitches. But aside from the hilarity that goes on between the young leads, Lawrence’s chemistry with Feldman is very believable, with the duo’s connection quite endearing and sweet, albeit painfully awkward at times – a nice homage to our own awkward sexual coming-of-age years.
Stupnitsky and John Phillips’ script for No Hard Feelings works best when it doesn’t try and be more than what it should be, a butt-clenching look at a pre-college kid learning the ropes in the worst way possible: under the guise of his own helicopter parents.
Does it drift of course eventually? For a bit, yeah.
It’s not as watertight a film as those earlier classic comedies that kept the R comedy market thriving in the ’80s – nor the one that brought it back briefly in the 90s, American Pie– because it’s slightly misshapen third act, where the outrageous gags make space for something more akin to the finale of a message-skewed family sitcom, comes after such a wonderful barrage of laughs but as the first one in a long while, No Hard Feelings is a great vehicle for the genre to begin its travels into the new millennium with. A very entertaining and swift 100 minutes.
