No Hard Feelings

Directed by Gene Stupnitsky, No Hard Feelings follows Jennifer Lawrence’s down-on-her-luck Maddie Barker as she agrees to date a socially-awkward teenager (Andrew Barth Feldman’s Percy) in exchange for a car. It’s an oddball premise that is, at the outset, employed to watchable, decent-enough effect by Stupnitsky, as the filmmaker, armed with his and John Phillips’ screenplay, delivers an agreeable opening stretch that’s elevated by the two leads’ winning efforts – with Lawrence and Feldman’s compelling work here, when coupled with their genuine non-romantic chemistry together, going a long way towards compensating for a movie that is, for the most part, rarely as funny as one might’ve anticipated. (Many of the film’s comedic set-pieces, including Maddie and Percy’s disastrous visit to a high-school party, fall completely and hopelessly flat.) And while the picture does benefit from a first half littered with compelling sequences, especially a terrific scene wherein Percy belts out Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” within a crowded restaurant, No Hard Feelings progresses into an increasingly tedious and tiresome third act that adopts an almost incongruously sentimental feel – which ensures, certainly, that the movie peters out to a palpable and fairly distressing extent. The end result is a thoroughly hit-and-miss comedy that is, ultimately, more miss than hit, with the film’s failure particularly disappointing given the promising setup and go-for-broke performancse.

** out of ****