No Hard Feelings

The coming-of-age tale is an incredibly old format. The divide between children and adults has always been an important one, and so the act of crossing into adulthood is worth noting. Many cultures independently developed some celebration of its arrival, be it religious like the bar and bat mitzvah, or secular like the quinceañera. This also highlights how in many places, especially the United States, that crossover point has drifted: both of those ceremonies take place squarely during what we now call the teenage years. With a longer life expectancy, fewer people dropping out of school to work on the family farm or take over the family business, and the rise of college, we can afford to allow our young people to take longer to come into themselves. This is to say nothing of world events delaying previously important markers of personal independence, like how the Great Recession delayed the ability for many to buy a house, or how the recent COVID pandemic ground most aspects of life to a halt. Whole essays and research papers continue to be written interrogating how the uncertainty they injected into the future reverberated throughout culture and development.

All of which means that coming-of-age stories are no longer confined to the realm of “children”. There’s been a rise in such stories centering around someone in their 20s or even 30s. Many of these characters live in a sort of in between state, taking on the trappings of adulthood while retaining similar mentalities and social behaviors of their youth. I immediately think of 2021: The Worst Person in the World is a perfect example of this phenomenon, and Licorice Pizza explores how the bond between a 20-something and teenager causes both to mature. Not that 2021 was the birth of that twist: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World from 2010 comes to mind, and the mid-aughts explosion of mumblecore was probably the last big wave of it. Although it feels like we may on the edge of another wave.

No Hard Feelings falls more in line with Licorice Pizza, with both characters aged up a bit.

Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 32-year-old townie in Montauk who seems content to live in the house in which she grew up, drive for Uber, and chill at the bar (where she also works) with her friends Sara and Jim (Natalie Norales and Scott MacArthur), picking up guys. All of that and her homeownership are threatened when her car gets repossessed due to overdue property taxes. A solution presents itself in the form of an unconventional Craigslist ad from a rich family, who offer a car in exchange for “dating” their extremely shy and introverted 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) before he goes off to college. The catch is that Percy doesn’t know, so Maddie needs to figure out how to meet and have sex with him without raising any flags.

I went into this with pretty low expectations. I often find these kind of high concept comedies with a taboo element lean too heavily on their premise alone for the humor, making for some pretty lazy or predictable jokes. Occasionally, the strength of the story shines through, but more often it drowns in a sea of its single note.

No Hard Feelings doesn’t completely avoid this trap, as much of the first half is laughing at Maddie very clumsily throwing herself at Percy, in a way that would raise the suspicions of anyone used to their parents planning every part of their life. Showing up where he volunteers and demanding to be helped by a person she’s never met wearing a tight, sexy dress. Making a bunch of crude and obvious innuendos where there’s no real opening to do so. Immediately diving into trying to get him alone and take his pants off. Part of this is to emphasize Maddie's view on sex, that not even names are necessary, never mind getting to know someone. But it does cause the audience to worry that this is going to be the whole movie.

However, in her desperation to keep the house, she starts trying to adapt her approach to what it seems he wants. Which is where the movie starts to reveal what it’s really interested in looking at. Sure, it retains some of its sex comedy baseline, as Maddie really needs that car. But we start to learn more about who Percy is and why he is this way, as well as how come this house means so much to Maddie and why she hates the families who summer in Montauk so much. Maddie delights in being treated like a person, and Percy takes to Maddie’s wild energy. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but they successfully shift the story in a more plot driven story in which both of them can begin their growth.

Most of the humor comes from the awkwardness of the situation and from Percy being an incredibly heightened version of someone deep in their shell, although it starts to take on some more heart as the characters deepen. Jim and Sara provide some absurd asides, as their background journey parallels Maddie’s realizations that her past is defining who she is now, and getting in the way of her dreams.

There’s some fair if clunky commentary on gentrification and how helicopter parents often cause the very problems they’re trying to avoid. But its core is really about the ways in which holding on to our past causes us damage in the present, and all the ways in which our dreams and true selves are repressed. It’s not the deepest exploration of that, and its humor was pretty hit or miss for me (with some distinct hits, to be clear), so it’s unlikely to leave a lasting impression.

Don’t go in expecting to have your mind blown, but don’t expect a hollow 90s sex comedy, either. On the whole, that clunkiness weighed it down more than I’d have liked, but its heart buoyed it enough that I can recommend it if you’re looking for a lightly raunchy good time with a couple things to say.