In a summer marked by “outrageous” women-driven comedies of the “Oh no they DIDN’T” variety, Jennifer Lawrence‘s “No Hard Feelings” stands out as the most outrageous of them all.
If your jaw doesn’t drop at the sight of a two-time Oscar winner, buck naked, raging and pummeling prank-prone young tourists “summering” in Montauk — rich drunken d-bags who thought it’d be cute to steal the clothes of a couple of skinny-dippers — well, maybe duck back into the “Spider-Verse” because this isn’t the movie for you.
But as “The Blackening” and the upcoming “Joy Ride” and earlier summers’ “Girls Trip” and “Bridesmaids” taught us, “outrageous” is hard to sustain, if you try to top your peak moments. And “outrageous” alone is never enough.
Lawrence takes the Cameron Diaz/Aubrey Plaza role in this raunchy farce from the writer of “Bad Teacher” and director of “Good Boys.” And while she’s game for anything, whatever it takes to pound a laugh out of a moment, it’s not enough in a comedy that sprints out of the gate, buries us under zingers and turns all sensitive and sentimental as it pulls its punches in the second and third acts.
Lawrence plays Maddie, a “local” year-round resident on the toniest end of the tony “East of the Hamptons” Long Island. Like townies in all tourist towns, from Aspen and Jackson Hole to Key West and Haleiwa, she’s got to hustle to be able to afford to live “in paradise.”
That makes her bitter, resentful of the rich who drive up property values, which drive up taxes and put her in danger of losing the bungalow on a coveted acre of land that her mother left her.
Maddie’s underwater, depending on summer to “make my nut,” collect enough in bartending tips and rideshare customers to cover that and all the other bills piling up.
Having her Toyota reposessed isn’t part of the plan. The fact that it’s repo’d by her “ghosted” ex (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) might give her wriggle room, or would if her latest Italian hook-up didn’t banana-hammock his way into her pleading.
Thirtysomething Maddie’s cut a wide swath through Montauk. The locals guys know better than to fall for her charms, her curves or her act.
Roller-blading to her one remaining job (funny) only hardens her determination. Is she desperate enough to “date” the son of some richies who offer a used Buick Regal for that service in a classified ad, just to bring their teen “out of his shell?”
“Date him or ‘DATE’ him?” she wants to know.
“Yes,” designer mansion/helicopter Mom (Laura Benanti) offers, helpfully.
“Date him HARD,” doting dad (Matthew Broderick, Ferris Bueller privilege all grown up) says. “Date his BRAINS out.”
Her pregnant friends (Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur) make sure she understands she’s a “sex worker” if she does this. Hard-headed, hard-hearted Maggie is “just a girl who needs a car.” She’s sexed up plenty of guys and “never gotten a Buick” out of it. What’s the big deal?
But this Princeton-bound kid (Andrew Barth Feldman, terrific) is sullen, shy, and so deep into his shell and naive to the ways of the world that he may be a lost cause.
Blame his parents, who monitor his every move and “protect” him from most everything. Blame them for naming him “Percy.”
The fact that he volunteers at the animal shelter may give Maddie access. But throwing herself at the kid, working harder at “working it” than a shapely, sexy Montauk barmaid should ever have to work, doesn’t help.
“You seem like the sort of person we take dogs FROM, not send dogs home with.”
There’s a bracing, balls-out quality to Lawrence’s Mean Girl/Bad (sex) Teacher turn here, and she leans into it like a lady who could use a hit. Maddie bullies Percy, her exes, customers and little kids at the laser tag emporium that’s Percy’s idea of a fun-time.
Feldman, an alumnus of the “High School Musical” TV-reboot, becomes a poster boy for “putzy nebbish” or “nebbishy putz” as Percy, misreading seduction signals, so spoiled and clueless he thinks nothing of spitting out — literally — his first-ever Long Island Iced Tea in front of his flirty neo-dominatrix hot date, who will put up with anything just to get that damned car.
Not that he knows about that.
But the script’s efforts to soften the comedy with sentiment — her taking pity on the kid, him psychoanalyzing her — turn “No Hard Feelings” soft in short order.
Bang-up set-pieces still pop up here and there. Lawrence, as we’ve seen on chat-show appearances, can be wicked fierce with a comeback. An ex has a ring on his finger?
“Is her vag ‘dishwasher safe?”
“No Hard Feelings” lives when impulsive, not-that-bright Maddie furiously focuses on her next immediate need — that car — and what she has to do next to “close the deal.”
It makes too little out of her class resentment, which fuels her fury. A generation too phone-obsessed to copulate is only dealt a glancing blow.
The picture shows signs of some re-cutting, as bits seen in the trailers didn’t make the final edit and some players (Kyle Mooney, Hasan Minhaj) come in for a sight gag or punchline, and get either built up or cut-down, depending on how they played to test-audiences.
But for all her efforts, Lawrence never quite hits that comic sweet spot. She can’t pull off that bowling-ball-of-brazen thing that Plaza, Schumer and Tiffany Haddish made their brassy brands. There’s a reason nobody tried to soften up the “Bad Teacher,” and that nobody thought a sensitive Sandra Bullock “type” would work in that role.
But when she’s manipulative and mean, working the hair, the legs and the cleavage like they’ve never let her down so far, Lawrence’s mean and mouthy “Man-Eater” is something to behold — outrageous, “out there” and literally letting it all hang out because who in their right mind going complain about that?
Aside from guys named “Percy?
Rating: R for sexual content, language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use
Cast:Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Scott MacArthur, Hasan Minhaj, Kyle Mooney and Matthew Broderick.
Credits: Directed by Gene Stupnitsky scripted by Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillips. A Sony/Columbia release.
Running time: 1:43





