#MovieReview: A comedy straight out of the 90s [Watch]

No Hard Feelings is a ludicrous studio comedy which mostly delivers on its raunchy throwback gags.

And in this context ludicrous should be taken as a positive, given the DNA of this movie can be directly traced from the Farrelly Brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary), through American Pie, to a 2023 setting.

These are no great milestones of cinema, but were once stock and trade in the studio system and made for a teenage audience for whom those movies became classics.

Look closely at any of the story lines from the great 80s-2000s comedies through a modern lens and you could scarcely imagine their success.

Some have been excised from popular culture for good reason, but most pushed the boundaries in search of comedy gold which is why their popularity endures.

Comedy at a studio level barely exists anymore and was one of the casualties of the ‘missing middle’ after executives and algorithms determined that franchise IP was a better investment.

Teens are spoon-fed sequels that are so self-referential and meta that they think a wink at the audience passes for a flat-out comedy.

No Hard Feelings does some half-hearted work to explore themes of helicopter parenting and bullying, but mostly it is shooting for the best joke-per-second ratio it can achieve.

Mild spoilers to follow

Maddie (a fantastic Jennifer Lawrence) is a down on her luck 32-year-old Uber driver who is in desperate need of a new car to save her childhood home.

She spots an advert from the helicopter parents of awkward 19-year-old Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), asking for a woman to help him ‘come out of his shell’ before he heads to college.

It is a thinly veiled request for sex work, which the parents think would better prepare Percy for campus life. Again, this plot is ludicrous.

Although it could easily have been seedy, Lawrence’s magnetic performance and genuine chemistry with Feldman ensure that this movie largely toes a reasonable line.

Of course there is plenty of swearing, nudity and cringe-inducing sex scenes, but it is little more than a high-schooler will see in 10 minutes on social media.

Whether it is appealing to the teenagers of 2023, or only those who were young 20 years ago, remains to be seen but it certainly has enough high points to be worth a trip to the movies.

Lawrence finally has a chance to let her comedic chops show and that is worth the price of admission alone.

If you want to see studios take risks on comedies in the future, this is exactly the kind of movie to spend your money on.

Rated 16 for scenes of Nudity, Language, Sex and Violence.
3/5.

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