comedy
“No Hard Feelings”: comedy fun with Lawrence and Broderick
Jennifer Lawrence as Maddie and Andrew Barth Feldman as Percy in a scene from the film No Hard Feelings. photo
© Macall Polay/CTMG/dpa
Coming-of-age in Montauk: If things still don’t work out with the girls shortly before university, then an experienced Jennifer Lawrence has to give tuition in matters of love.
Many a literature fan probably first heard of Montauk through Max Frisch’s short novel of the same name. The place on the American east coast appears in a song by Billy Joel and is said to have been an inspiration for the film “Jaws”.
“No Hard Feelings”, this US comedy directed by Gene Stupnitsky, is less about dangerous white underwater animals. But about a boy named Percy, who is about to enter an elite collage, but has had less to do with women so far. His helicopter-flying parents, who have moved to Montauk, want to remedy this immediately and without fail. Jennifer Lawrence and other US mimes are playing. A surprise is the appearance of Matthew Broderick (Percy’s concerned dad), as odd as it is pretty.
Lawrence, who first drew attention almost 15 years ago in powerful small productions like Winter’s Bone, and who rose to worldwide fame with her appearances in the Hunger Games series – this Lawrence is here as a confident if slightly deranged Uber -Seeing a female driver who is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Her car was recently impounded, so Maddie, out of desperation, agrees to an unusual deal: Her new breadwinners are parents whose introverted 19-year-old son is interested in computer games and is highly intelligent, but instead he likes girls his age, be it out of disinterest , whether out of shyness, ignores it. In exchange for a Buick, Maddie agrees to take care of the immature son from a rich family, paving his way to adulthood.
Lively – and at times sad comedy
The best moments of this lively, sometimes sad comedy make you think of comedy god Judd Apatow: In the past twenty years he has understood like no other in US cinema, how broken as well as strong, as run-down as infinitely funny female characters on the screens to send to this world. Think of the great Amy Schumer in Apatow’s Trainwreck. And the great women characters in “Bridesmaids”, this completely insane cinema trip from 2011, which have long since gone down in comedy history, are also thanks to Apatow, who produced the cult play starring Kristen Wiig and others. In any case, without Apatow, who also launched many guy comedies, the refreshing humor of “No Hard Feelings” would be unthinkable.
The question remains what to think of Jennifer Lawrence’s (32) partly erratic, partly stunning appearance. Once she’s not too bad about messing with a group of tourists stark naked on the beach in Montauk. A real fight ensues; and from what can be assumed from the cinema seat, the US star has not resorted to a body double or digital tricks here. That’s brave; and, if you will, with almost feminist verve.
In any case, it’s a lot of fun and counteracts some of the stereotypes that still exist in US mainstream cinema when it comes to gender roles. What Lawrence can definitely do is give a character like Maddie a lot more depth than the (not always particularly original) screenplay initially suggests.
Most Lawrence fans won’t be able to avoid this sad-toned summertime fun. Which, by the way, also applies to fans of Matthew Broderick, who as a dad with a gray mane reminds little of Ferris Bueller from 37 years ago: his legendary film character from back then (“Ferris macht Blau” is one of the best US teen comedies ever ) was about Percy’s age. With one major difference: His Ferris from 1986 was much more spread-legged than the Percy from 2023.