No Hard Feelings - Movie Review
3"No Hard Feelings" (2023) directed by Gene Stupnitsky is a role reversal "romantic" comedy. It had the potential to be a creepy morally questionable mess but I actually found it quite charming and enjoyable.
32 year old Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is on the brink of losing her house as she is unable to pay her taxes and she has lost her car. She takes up an unusual offer from a rich family to temporarily date their son and eventually sleep with him in exchange for a new car. Maddie meets 19 year old Percy Becker (Andrew Barth Feldman) but he is far more challenging to get with than she anticipated. Percy starts to fall for Maddie but refuses to sleep with her because she is treating him poorly and as a means to an end.
No Hard Feelings can be a little bit creepy and predatory similar to "Licorice Pizza" (2021), but I felt the direction it went ultimately saved it from crossing the line. Surprisingly the two leads actually have quite a bit of chemistry with each other despite their age difference. The movie is very funny in general and it was able to make me smile a lot. I liked that the film didn't take any strong annoying political stances or anything like that; it even smartly kicks off the film with a poor versus rich angle instead of the more obvious and easy to do men versus women approach that I feel lesser movies would have went with.
The premise of the film was not that interesting to me to begin with, and it's even a bit depraved / pathetic to be honest, but the film really takes time to establish it's lead characters properly and stay grounded and relatable in the areas it can be. I thought I would be feeling second hand embarrassment for Jennifer Lawrence coming out of this, but I actually ended up with even more respect for her than I already did as she performed excellently and this is not a super appealing role to take. While the film is fortunately not a men versus women situation, it does offer some unique moral ambiguity as to whether Maddie or Percy is in the wrong, or if they both are, or none of them are. I personally think Maddie is more in the wrong here, as she is low key destroying this 19 year old's life (Although the final blame can be placed on the parents), but you as an audience member can still understand why she's doing what she's doing so it's not like you hate her or want her to fail or anything.
No Hard Feelings is a bit depraved but it's quite funny and charming and even manages to end up on a sweet note. I also wanted to mention that more than half of the film's budget was put towards Jennifer Lawrence's salary, and I must say, money well spent.
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