Review: No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings
Cert: 15 / 103 mins / Dir. Gene Stupnitsky / Trailer

Gene Stupnitsky directs and co-writes this bawdy tale of Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), a single woman in her early thirties living in Long Island NY, massively in debt because of rising property taxes due to tourist-gentrification. When she answers a classified advert from shipped-in helicopter parents Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti) wanting to hire someone to 'date' their timid son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) over the summer before he goes to Princeton University, she jumps at the chance. But it turns out, they might both just learn a little more about themselves as etc etc finish setup paragraph here.

Playing out like a substandard mashup of the worst American Pie instalments and the lamentable Bad Teacher, this sort of film certainly has its cinematic place. That place is twenty years ago. It's aware of this displacement. Stupnitsky takes random potshots at the apparent over-protectiveness of parents in 2023, and at the changing attitudes of youth as a whole. But he does this in a glibly observational way, without understanding how that's happened and what these changes have been a reaction to.

As predictable in its mawkish moments as its Outrageous™ ones, No Hard Feelings is sketchily written, timidly directed and performed like a dress rehearsal. The piano rendition of Maneater in the restaurant scene is the only good thing the film has to offer, and even that occurs too early in the script to fulfil its emotional potential. Give it a few weeks, look that up on YouTube.

Managing to feel at least half an hour longer than it is, No Hard Feelings is a straight-to-Netflix anachronism that's somehow landed a coveted theatrical window between superhero movies. And short of crippling mortgage repayments or former colleagues desperately calling in a favour, the acclaimed and provably capable Jennifer Lawrence certainly doesn't need to tarnish her own CV with this. But it's done now, so well done everybody.

And yeah, I'm taking a point off for that gratuitously cack-handed Ferris Bueller reference.

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