Review: Amazingly, "No Hard Feelings" Is A Refreshing, Heartfelt Sex Comedy

Jennifer Lawrence finds her niche in this touching, if potentially problematic, comedy.

June 28, 2023

Film magnifies human hypocrisy, exposes our insincerity, challenges our self-perceptions, and forces us to embrace how little our words mean when tossing them aside can make us laugh.

As such, double standards are the lifeblood of comedy. It takes daring, uncaring, and a million subtle choices to offer something fresh. We have to push things further than we deem acceptable in daily life; for an American studio marketing a film to primarily American audiences, that means sex.

Hollywood is no stranger to sex comedies, so No Hard Feelings has to give something new. In this case, the knowledge that while a woman in her early 30s sexually pursuing a 19-year-old virgin is inherently gross, in cinematic form, it can make us laugh. Of course, if an older man pursued a high school girl, we’d likely refuse to see the film on principle. We’re hypocrites, as we acknowledge virtually every time we watch a comedy of this kind.

The question thus becomes: can a movie successfully challenge us to look beyond the idea and embrace the specifics of its application?

Maddie Barker has spent her entire life in the seaside community of Montauk, a massive tourist destination. As the rich flood the hamlet, the property taxes rise. When her car gets repossessed, she cannot pay those taxes, and after finding a Craigslist ad from a couple seeking a summer girlfriend for their shy, sheltered son, Percy, in exchange for a Buick, Maddie answers.

Of course, nailing a comedy like this requires a lighter touch. The relationship is naturally predatory, age gap aside. The premise is inherently duplicitous, reliant on deceiving someone into submission. No Hard Feelings thus has the challenging goal of convincing us that this “relationship,” despite our moral or ethical objections, can get legitimized based upon the two people in it and not any rationalizations for what we see on screen. In short, can it do what we never can whenever we do wrong: give reasons instead of excuses?

Maddie is someone we’ve seen before, in male and female form. She’s emotionally stunted and deeply traumatized, unleashing her loose moral code on unsuspecting romantic partners who fall victim to her inability to commit. The promiscuity is unapologetic, the impatience for those who challenge it even more. The task is simple: grow from the one relationship she forms that transcends everything she’s known and wrought. If you’ve never seen this movie before, then you’ve probably never seen a movie.

It’s down to Jennifer Lawrence that Maddie feels like more than she truly is, but it’s a moot point. The heart, soul, moral compass, and reason for being is Percy, who’s unlike anything we’ve seen on film.

Sex comedies always need the slender, awkward virgin, but Percy is a victim of societal misconception.

Percy’s "shy," but is he? The reasons for his self-imposed social isolation get revealed in a heart-to-heart with Maddie, and the more she tries to force him from his shell, the more it becomes clear that Percy isn’t “shy” in the classical sense of the word. He’s looking for the connection he needs to feel interested in anything; sex is simply the object of this particular pursuer’s desire. If the ability to legitimately feel something deeper is absent, he cannot work up the interest necessary to invest.

Yet, despite Maddie giving the opposite of what he wants, Percy routinely lets her show that she’s more. He doesn’t want to frolic in the ocean or stay at a dive bar on a first date, but he’ll play along. It doesn’t mean he’ll give in, but he holds the door wide open: if only Maddie is willing to step inside.

He’s “dorky” by playing video games, mastering the piano, and isn’t as gregarious as a typical popular teenager, but in what sense is he truly “dorky?” He’s intelligent, eloquent, earnest, and sincere. He doesn’t fumble over his words or do anything strange compared to your ordinary teenager. He reacts quizzically to the hijinks Maddie ropes him into, but who wouldn’t? After all, most people wouldn’t play chicken with a train with a naked guy on the hood of their car.

In truth, he’s one of the most fully-realized characters ever in a comedy. Yes, he’s sheltered and neurotic, but he’s also many things we often refuse to legitimize when experienced together. Percy is sensitive but willful; he’s open-minded but self-assured; he’s horny but selective (and insistent on the terms under which he’ll become intimate).

It makes it easy to believe Maddie would discover that Percy is a tough nut to crack and ultimately learn things from him that her lifelong friends can’t teach. It also makes it easy for the movie to make us see Maddie’s continued pursuit of his virginity is one Percy shouldn't have to endure. Thankfully, it never shies away from this and concludes its insight into that damage in its climax, where Percy, like any teenager, cannot contain his emotions after trying so hard to run from them.

It’s a fascinating balancing act, made better by the film’s refusal to condescend. Maddie’s moral perspective is selfish, but she isn’t so unabashedly immoral that the film’s lessons feel insincere. When chastised by a past lover demeaning her emotional detachment and waving his marriage in her face, her frustration with his perspective feels real. It’s a product of her fractured childhood as much as a legitimate aspect of her personality; even if her experiences exacerbated that detachment, she would never suffer that kind of person easily. As such, she feels drawn to someone more measured, like Percy.

For his part, Percy has spent so long inside himself that Maddie’s forwardness, while initially off-putting, lets him be outgoing, as he is by nature. Sure, he isn’t the type to perform a piano-ballad version of “Maneater” at a fancy seafood restaurant of his own accord, but he’s got it in him to show off his talents with the right person encouraging him.

The film’s job is to make this clear: these are two people whose personalities can help each other grow in ways they did not expect. It’s easy to become jaded as we age, even before we hit our 40s, where midlife crises are ripe for the plucking. Life is brutal, and sunny memories don’t mask the frustrations of the present, where young love or house ragers get replaced with property taxes and car payments. A young person, unabashed in their ambitions and affections, believing only thoughts and feelings matter in this messed-up world, can help us remember that life is what we make of it.

Someone a tad older holds an inherent power; when wielded correctly, it can help someone younger harness those wild emotions and gain the necessary perspective to adjust course and take control of their life.

It doesn't make Maddie's behavior acceptable or erase that, regardless of their friendship, Percy will spend years struggling to reconcile this relationship. No Hard Feelings doesn’t pretend otherwise, even in its final scene; that’s why it works. It recognizes a million things can be true simultaneously: some good, some horrible, some inexcusable, and some necessary.

Let’s be clear: if you’re uninterested in the ethical implications and want a good laugh, No Hard Feelings is for you. The trailer fails to illuminate its true comedic genius, which is on brighter display during Maddie’s ill-advised Nelly-fueled seduction or naked evisceration of clothes-stealing teenagers than in any moment the trailer hypes.

But movies like this, those comedies that aim to break new ground, challenge our double standards, and offer something unfamiliar, need something more than the laughs that literally define the genre.

Maddie says it best as she tries to convince Percy’s helicopter parents that, despite her being older than they advertised for, she’s the woman for the job. See, young girls are “dumb,” and they need someone with more wisdom, the necessary “tact and “sensitivity” such a delicate situation requires. No Hard Feelings asks a lot of its audience, and for us to buy what it sells, we need help: killer performances, which Lawrence and especially Feldman offer; genuine laughs, not played-out humor, but something more natural within the confines of its lunacy.

But more than anything, we need tact and sensitivity. If you can’t find it in Percy’s tearful desperation to understand Maddie’s emotional limitations during their lobster dinner, Maddie’s remorseful resolve to take heed of Percy’s scathing indictment of her life choices and better herself, or the pair’s heartfelt embrace on the beach after all the pain Maddie’s inflicted on Percy, the problem is you, not this masterstroke of a movie. But hey: no hard feelings.