Film Review: “No Hard Feelings”
I understand that this is a change of pace from my usual content, but the tennis season is in a bit of a lull right now. I’d like to diversify my content so that I always have something new to talk about. With that being stated, I recently went to see the new Jennifer Lawrence-helmed summer comedy titled No Hard Feelings. My concise thoughts on the movie are accessible on my Letterboxd (turneredwards), but I’d like to go more in depth here.
Right off the bat, No Hard Feelings’ premise is an interesting one. Jennifer Lawrence’s character needs a car for her job, meaning she needs money; Andrew Barth Feldman’s character’s parents pay JLaw to “date” their son. Lawrence and Feldman work well enough on screen together for it to (kind of) work. Both leads do a commendable job with the script they’re given.
Unfortunately, that script is quite bland. The movie just isn’t that funny—although there were some brief parts that I found to be humorous (for example, Lawrence struggling to reveal her age to Barker’s parents, or the Chinese finger trap moment), the movie didn’t really make me laugh out loud. For reference, I’ve cried from laughter watching the first two Home Alone movies.
Additionally, the movie is very predictable throughout its 103 minute runtime. The biggest surprise in the movie is a scene that, in my opinion, was the brief fight scene on the beach. I found that scene to be very out of place in comparison to the rest of the film. Without that scene, the movie probably could have aimed for a PG-13 rating.
While this movie was predictable, that aspect of its nature did not stop it from being frustrating. Some scenes drag on for far too long. When Feldman’s character played piano and sang in the restaurant, I sat through it wondering how long it would take for us to get to an actually funny scene.
No Hard Feelings attempts to inject drama into a script that isn’t developed enough to support its weight. Why am I supposed to care about Lawrence’s character’s refusal to speak to her father when I barely know (or like) the woman? The characters lack the depth required to make drama compelling—if I don’t care about them as people, I most certainly will not care about their interactions between one another.
You’ll notice that throughout this review, I haven’t referred to any of the characters by their actual names within the film. This is because I’m struggling to remember what they are. Do with that information what you will.
I felt the movie was shot and scored adequately. Cinematography and sound design were neither weak nor strong points.
Overall, I found No Hard Feelings to be just barely satisfactory across all fronts. It is probably one of the weakest of the summer blockbusters—I’ve seen Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and found them to be much more enjoyable—but it was still marginally better than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.