No Hard Feelings

This weekend, No Hard Feelings, a new comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence was released in theaters. No Hard Feelings follows 32-year-old Maddie as she struggles to pay the bills of her house after losing her car. When she sees an ad from helicopter parents to "date" their 19-year-old son, Maddie must awaken the son to the ways of the world to save her house. The trailer kind of sold me on this film. It made me laugh several times and I also enjoy Jennifer Lawrence so I was interested to see how it went.

As expected, this movie was pretty funny. I didn't realize how funny an actress Jennifer Lawrence was until seeing this movie. She has great comedic and can deliver over-the-top performances when the movie needs her to. The two types of humor that are used in this film are physical humor and awkward humor with the awkward humor mostly coming from Maddie trying to "woo" Percy in the most uncomfortable and creepy way possible. Most of the humor works in this film and there is rarely a joke that falls flat. There is also a great amount of chemistry between Percy and Maddie throughout the film. They are both able to play off each other quite well while also helping each other to grow and change. There are a lot of fun moments between the two just with the dialogue they have. The movie also does a great job of being a semi-coming-of-age story for Percy. We get to see him come out of his shell and grow to become an independent adult that can interact with others.

While the movie is pretty fun, the overall quality is not great. Most of the funniest moments in the movie were shown in the trailer which made the rest of the moments leave much to be desired. I am also not a huge fan of raunchy sex comedies which likely led to my lower level of enjoyment of the film. The biggest issue with the movie itself was there were a few too many unnecessary plot threads in the movie. The biggest example of this is when Percy and Maddie are at dinner. Percy meets this other girl and they soon hit it off at a party but then it is just never spoken of again. It is just things like that which bring down the quality of the story. Some of the side stories added to the main plot, but there were a few that just kind of happen that make one think "Why was this even in the movie".

Overall, this was a funny enough comedy but some of the humor as well as the unnecessary plot threads are what bring the movie down for me.

Score: 6.5/10 Grade: B- Recommendation: Watch it if you are a fun of raunchy comedies.