No Hard Feelings

The film works best when it forgets that it has to prove anything and simply lets Jennifer Lawrence go wild. It has an uncomfortable premise, a tone built around second-hand embarrassment and a clear desire to recover a kind of adult sex comedy that had almost disappeared from mainstream cinema. When it commits to that, it has some genuinely funny moments.

Jennifer Lawrence is easily the main reason to watch it. She throws herself into physical comedy, vulgarity, excess and humiliation without trying to protect her image. That gives Maddie a lot of life, although not everything worked for me. There are moments when the character becomes so clumsy and so absurdly obvious that it feels as though the screenplay suddenly lowers her intelligence just to manufacture the next comic situation.

Andrew Barth Feldman balances that energy quite well. His character brings shyness, discomfort and vulnerability, preventing the film from becoming just a succession of sexual jokes. Their chemistry is strange, which in this case is exactly what the story needs. It is not built around a perfect couple, but around two very different people constantly throwing each other off balance.

I also appreciated the film's willingness to be a little outrageous. There is physical humor, awkward situations and a certain shamelessness that, for much of the running time, feels refreshing. It does not always land, but when it does, it is genuinely funny, and Lawrence shows that she has far better comic instincts than she is sometimes given credit for.

The problem arrives when the film starts distrusting its own irreverence. Gradually come the lessons, the personal growth, the need to explain what each character has learned and that familiar moralizing layer that seems almost compulsory in many modern comedies. I do not mind characters evolving; I mind being able to feel the screenplay making sure we understand exactly what we are supposed to take from it.

That is where it loses spontaneity. What had worked as a slightly shameless comedy begins to settle into a much more conventional structure. The film seems to feel the need to apologize for its own premise and prove that, underneath the outrageous behavior, there is a very respectable heart. That shift takes away a good deal of its freshness.

Even so, I do not think the sentimental material completely ruins the film. There are moments when the relationship between the characters gains humanity, and some quieter scenes work precisely because they contrast with the earlier chaos. The problem is one of balance: once the message becomes too visible, the movie stops trusting the audience.

Gene Stupnitsky keeps the pace fairly lively and clearly understands that Lawrence is his best resource. The camera and editing serve the comedy without many visual ambitions. There is no especially distinctive formal personality, but one is not really necessary for a film whose success depends mainly on timing, awkwardness and the charisma of its leads.

I also think there is something interesting beneath the humor in the way the film looks at people who are stuck in different ways. That gives it more substance than a simple collection of jokes, although, ironically, the more openly it explains that idea, the weaker it becomes.

No Hard Feelings was funny and quite entertaining for me. It has a fearless Jennifer Lawrence, a central pairing that works better than I expected and several genuinely amusing moments. But it also has that familiar flaw of wanting to wrap everything up with an overly clear emotional lesson. When it is shameless and absurd, it works; when it starts explaining how we should feel, it drops noticeably. Even so, I had a good time with it.