🎬🎬 Movie: No Hard Feelings (2023)

In the sun-bleached coastal town of Montauk, where the waves crash against fading dreams and beachside diners hum with low-season quiet, lives Maddie — a sharp-witted woman with a busted car, a dwindling bank account, and a house she’s about to lose. This is the backdrop for No Hard Feelings, Gene Stupnitsky’s offbeat 2023 comedy that arrives wearing the loud, chaotic clothes of a raunchy sex farce, only to quietly slip into something far more thoughtful.

At first glance, the premise sounds like the setup for a hundred gags and groans: A woman in her 30s, broke and desperate, is hired by wealthy helicopter parents to date — and, as heavily implied, seduce — their painfully shy, 19-year-old son before he heads off to Princeton. The idea was plucked from a real Craigslist ad, and the film doesn’t shy away from its absurdity. But No Hard Feelings is not the movie you expect. Or rather, it’s not just that movie.

Maddie, played by Jennifer Lawrence in one of her most electric performances in years, is all edge and armor. She’s the kind of woman who deflects with sarcasm before you can get close, who bulldozes through awkwardness with biting humor, and who’s spent her whole life surviving instead of thriving. Montauk is changing — wealth is moving in, the town she grew up in is slipping through her fingers, and she’s trying to hold onto her last connection to it: her childhood home. When a bizarre opportunity lands in her lap, she takes it, almost mockingly. Get paid to "date" a rich couple’s son? Sure. Why not?

Enter Percy Becker, played with astonishing nuance by Andrew Barth Feldman. He’s not your typical coming-of-age movie nerd. He’s not a joke. He’s not a prop. Percy is kind, intelligent, emotionally guarded, and deeply uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s spent most of his youth in a bubble of privilege, but also of protection — and isolation. Socially inexperienced and anxiety-prone, he doesn’t need to be “fixed.” What he needs is to be seen.

What unfolds is a comedy that constantly pulls the rug out from under your expectations. Yes, there are outrageous moments — including one fully unhinged physical sequence that proves Lawrence has absolutely no fear when it comes to committing to the bit. Yes, there’s sex talk, cringe encounters, and enough innuendo to fuel a dozen raunchy comedies. But beneath the surface, No Hard Feelings is a story about disconnection, about the fear of growing up, and about the different kinds of loneliness that can shape us — whether we’re 19 or 32.

Maddie thinks she’s the one in control. She’s street-smart, experienced, and jaded. Percy, by contrast, is innocent, awkward, and painfully sincere. But slowly, subtly, the film flips the script. Maddie may be the one with the car keys (sometimes), but Percy begins to disarm her in ways she didn’t see coming. He listens. He cares. He notices the cracks in her facade — the way she brushes off pain, the way she clings to the past as if it's a life raft. Percy may be inexperienced in dating, but he’s emotionally awake in a way Maddie hasn’t been for years.

Their connection isn’t sexual — and that’s part of what makes the movie work. The tension isn’t romantic, it’s existential. They are two people at opposite ends of a life transition — one just beginning, the other flailing through adulthood — both trying to figure out who they are when the road map doesn’t make sense anymore.

Director Gene Stupnitsky, who co-wrote Good Boys and worked on The Office, knows his way around awkward humor and off-kilter characters. But here, he demonstrates surprising restraint and empathy. He allows the absurdity of the plot to play out without mocking his characters. He lets them be human. And in doing so, he finds a kind of comedy that doesn’t just aim for the laugh — it aims for the gut.

Jennifer Lawrence is the film’s anchor and live wire. She throws herself into Maddie with wild, comedic abandon — climbing, crashing, diving, and swearing her way through every situation. But she also grounds the character in pain and depth. Maddie isn’t just broke — she’s heartbroken. She isn’t just crass — she’s tired. Lawrence plays her with layers, peeling back Maddie’s defiance to reveal a woman who’s afraid of being left behind.

Opposite her, Feldman is a revelation. Known mostly for his musical theater work, he brings a soulful, sensitive presence to Percy that makes their scenes together unexpectedly moving. There’s one moment — quiet, simple — where Percy tells Maddie what he wants out of life. It’s not a punchline. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a truth. And in that moment, you realize: this is his coming-of-age story, but it might be hers too.

The film is also a sharp critique of the generational divide — how parents overprotect their children into paralysis, how young adults are forced into a world they’re ill-prepared for, and how the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for those on the margins. No Hard Feelings wraps these themes in a breezy, often bawdy package, but its subtext lingers long after the credits roll.

By the end, Maddie and Percy have both changed — not dramatically, not unrealistically, but in small, significant ways. She lets go of something she’s been clinging to. He takes a step into the unknown. And we’re left with the sense that while the relationship between them may not have been “normal,” it was real. And sometimes, real is exactly what we need — messy, awkward, painful, hilarious, and all.

No Hard Feelings is not just a summer comedy. It’s a film about misfits helping each other grow. About how connection doesn’t have to come in a romantic package to matter. And about how, sometimes, growing up means unlearning everything you thought you had figured out.

It’s bold. It’s weird. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. But more than that — it’s honest.

And in a genre that too often settles for cheap laughs, No Hard Feelings dares to feel.