NO HARD FEELINGS

No Hard Feelings feels like a bit of a throwback to sex comedies of the early-mid 2000’s.

After losing her car, and with the possibility of losing her home, Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) needs money. Increasingly desperate she answers a Craigslist ad from two helicopter parents who are looking for someone to “date” their 19-year-old introverted son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman).

There was, when the trailer was first released, a minor controversy around the plot. Typically men arguing “imagine if the gender roles were reversed”. Well, as it happens we don’t need to imagine. The history of sex comedies is littered with films where men lie to women for sex, without anyone batting an eyelid. It is a non-issue, jumped upon by those pretending to care in order to push an agenda.

No Hard Feelings also never attempts to justify Maddies actions. It gives her understandable motivations, but never attempts to say that what she is doing is right.

Now, onto the film.

We will start, briefly, by talking of what the film does well.

It is, on occasion, quite sweet. Far sweeter than you would expect it to be. And while these moments do dry up as the film progresses, they are there. Hinting that perhaps this could have been something more than it ended up.

There is also a nice musical number involving Percy playing piano. One of the few moments that actively engages the audience on an emotional level.

But that’s about it.

The main problems with No Hard Feelings, are twofold.

Firstly, Jennifer Lawrence and and Andrew Barth Feldman have very little chemistry. I really like Lawrence as an actor, and I think her character is convincing here, but every time she is on screen with her co-lead it all feels very difficult to watch.

It feels almost like the two actors were being directed by two different people. Each with their own ideas about the tone of the film. Maddie feels like a character verging on the believable. She might be slightly heightened, but she feels like someone you might meet day-to-day.

Percy, however, is a full on nerd stereotype. Every single aspect of his character dialled up to 11 on the nerd scale.

It makes their interactions, and their development as a duo, feel incredibly jarring.

Secondly, and this is the problem that proves insurmountable, No Hard Feelings just isn’t very funny.

It’s not even that the jokes fall flat. For much of the film I would be hard pressed to tell you where the jokes were even meant to be. Large portions of the film went by where nothing funny was even attempted.

I watched No Hard Feelings in a half full cinema, but amongst the entire audience all that the film managed to elicit was an occasional titter. And even these were nothing to do with the actual script, and everything to do with Lawrences performance.

She is a producer on the film so has to take a portion of the responsibility for its lack of quality, but on screen she is, at the very least, trying to make something funny happen. It rarely works, but at least it isn’t just someone coasting towards their paycheque.

Ultimately, No Hard Feelings has the sheen of something challenging and risqué, but once you’ve scratched below the surface you’ll find a film playing it safe. Never daring to try anything new or exciting.

Not heartwarming enough to engage on an emotional level. Not funny enough to mask its failings with laughter.

They may have reversed the gender roles but other than that No Hard Feelings delivers nothing that you haven’t seen done better 100 times before.