‘No Hard Feelings’ review: A raunchy Jennifer Lawrence comedy that’s funny, and also kind of sweet

I don’t want to oversell “No Hard Feelings.” I don’t want to undersell it, either.

It’s enjoyable and generates a lot of laughs, some cheap, some clever. It’s gratifying to see Jennifer Lawrence run a comedy with an android co-star, in this case, Andrew Barth Feldman, one of a handful of Broadway actors on view here. The cast buoys material that, in the wrong hands, could’ve curdled in a minute. This may sound like stating the obvious, but after the recent, indifferent glut of superhero sequels that aren’t super, I’ll take a modestly scaled, reasonably humane R-rated comedy that lets Lawrence be funny.

She plays Maddie, a tragicomic case of an Uber driver without a car who bartends on the side. It’s summer season on Long Island, New York, where Maddie has lived her entire life. She’s in her early 30s and needs money, fast, to prevent a foreclosure on the modest house in lovely, beachy, gallingly expensive Montauk left to her by her late mother.

Score! Literally! Maddie answers a Craigslist ad run by a pair of fond, nervous helicopter parents (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, wonderfully contained in their interplay). They’re concerned about their socially anxious, temperamentally isolated 19-year-old Princeton-bound son, Percy (Feldman). He needs a summer to remember, or at least one to launch him less fearfully into his college years. The parents are looking for some nice woman in her early 20s to “date” him. Maddie’s a decade older than that, but close enough.

The mark, Percy, is not supposed to find out about this plan even as it’s unfolding. It’s meant to be a naturally occurring event. So Maddie — who will get a car out of the deal — visits Percy at the animal shelter where he works with dogs. She goes in for the seductive kill, all legs and purring come-ons and husky insinuations. When they meet, Percy’s holding a dachshund; Feldman has a wonderful way of looking like a whippet himself, all wide eyes and narrow experience.

Director Gene Stupnitsky wrote “No Hard Feelings” with John Phillips, and while the script could’ve used another side character or two — Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur knock around, entertainingly, as Maddie’s friends and confidants — the story’s essentially a two-character sex farce with a side of sweetness. Percy’s fragile emotional state and history of being bullied is taken just seriously enough to give the movie some glue. The pandemic goes unmentioned, but with so many Percys finding their way through these past few years, no mention is needed.

Maddie’s own story, hinging on a father she never knew, underpins the sincerity sneaking around inside “No Hard Feelings,” though as the trailer indicates, we’re more often in the realm of broad, loud slapstick, though with less meanness than usual. The centerpiece, I suppose you’d call it, involves a skinny-dipping sequence. Maddie pushes Percy into it; at this point in the story, she’s losing patience and might be losing her house and a car. Clothes are stolen while they’re in the water; this leads to a nude scene that feels both calculatedly outlandish and worth the calculation.

Does the story logically hang together? No. Maddie could probably make at least half the money she needs by Vrbo-ing her house for the summer. (The script deals with this by having her say she doesn’t like the idea of rich jerks stinking up her house.) There’s a hint, at least, of a socioeconomic context in the square-off between Montauk townies dealing with the usual entitled summerfolk, though only a hint.

You don’t go to “No Hard Feelings” for a searing indictment of the way we live today; Montauk, its charm now threatened by super-wealthy gentrification, is no different than a lot of nice, scenic, untenably expensive places in America. Whatever. This relaxed, agreeable comedy, filmed near but not in Montauk, works because the stars make it work, and the premise — a little hoary — doesn’t sweat the logic part. Lawrence has fantastic timing and a kind of take-it-or-leave-it confidence that energizes a formulaic comedy. Plus she knows how to treat the quieter, sadder bits for low-keyed but legitimate stakes. I hate to end this review by quoting a terrible Adam Sandler rom-com, but with Lawrence and Feldman at the wheel, “No Hard Feelings” makes it easy to just go with it.

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'NO HARD FEELINGS'

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sexual content, language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use)

Running time: 1:43

How to watch: In theaters Friday

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