Jennifer Lawrence is a good actress with broad range. If you don’t believe me, check out one of her earlier, pre-fame films, Winter’s Bone. The movie is based on a gritty book by Daniel Woodrell and portrays the desperation of extreme poverty. The actress gives a performance that is both mesmerizing and gut wrenching.

            Because I appreciate Jennifer Lawrence’s skills, I wanted to like No Hard Feelings, but I wound up with some misgivings. Here is the premise of the movie. Lawrence plays Maddie, a woman in her young thirties who is living in a house in Montauk that she inherited from her mother. Post-high school, just as Maddie plans to launch herself, her mother becomes ill. Maddie abandons her dreams and stays in town to take care of her. After her mother dies, Maddie becomes enmeshed in a dead-end life; she’s miserable but can’t seem to muster up the energy to make changes. As the movie opens, Maddie’s house is about to be foreclosed. The income from her jobs as a bartender and Uber driver is not sufficient to pay her bills. After her car is towed away due to unpaid taxes, she sees an ad that offers a Buick Regal as payment for certain services. Parents of Percy, an awkward nineteen-year-old, want someone to “date” him before he heads off to Princeton in the fall. Their goal is for him to acquire social skills, confidence and let’s say, relationship experience. What possibly could go wrong in a movie about a thirty-ish woman using her sexual wiles to seduce an immature teen who still sleeps with a stuffed animal?”

            The saving grace of this film is that both Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman  (Percy) are adept at bringing tenderness and humor to the screen. When the camera is on them and there are no over-the-top plot shenanigans going on, the movie is a pleasure to watch. Their interactions are clever and funny. At first, Maddie views her relationship with Percy as merely transactional.  However, these two broken people develop a genuine affection for each other, which takes Maddie by surprise. I wound up caring about both characters.

           This tale had so much more potential than the screenplay realized. In places where the movie could have been poignant and moving and in places that could have been humorous in an intelligent way, the plot headed for over-the-top scenes and gratuitous raunchiness. Several scenes strained credulity. For example, we’re expected to believe that a party full of college-bound eighteen-year-olds would greet Maddie, who looks stunning, with dripping contempt and cougar jokes. Nope. I don’t think so.

             Why was I so surprised by the raunchiness of No Hard Feelings? What did I expect from a movie with that not-so-subtle title? To be fair, the movie delivered exactly what the trailer promised, a raunchy comedy with party scenes, car antics and items catching fire.

               But I felt disappointed the screenplay did not give Jennifer Lawrence and Adam Barth Feldman the means for fully displaying their acting prowess. If I wanted subtlety and depth, I should have watched a different movie. My fault, not theirs.

               All in all, I appreciated the opportunity to see Lawrence let loose her badass comedic style, impeccable timing, and brilliant delivery. It was also a pleasure to see Adam Barth Feldman play the perfect foil. He took Maddie’s words literally, missed jokes, and pre-Maddie, had an aversion to participating in the real world. Their performances were so moving and funny, I’m glad I watched the movie.