No Hard Feelings

On Sunday, after a day spent thrift shopping, delivering books to Little Libraries,

 getting ice cream at Tastee-Twist, napping, and having dinner at Classic Slice, Lisa and I went to see No Hard Feelings at the Ridge Cinema. YaYa and her boyfriend joined us both for dinner and the flick.

No Hard Feelings is a comedy about an Uber driver, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who loses her car just as she is facing foreclosure for back property taxes. To get back on the road, and save her home, she answers a personal ad from a rich couple who want her to “date” their son, played by Andrew Barth Feldman, in exchange for a free car. That’s “date” in quotes, as in take his virginity. Unfortunately for her the socially awkward 18-year-old is no easy catch, and time is running out.

I liked the film, and there were parts where I laughed my butt off. But when you release multiple trailers (just a cursory Google search showed me 5 minutes of “official” material) you’re showing your audience 10% of your final 90 minute  product, and presumably some of the best of it. There were parts of the film that would have been hysterical, had I not seen it six or seven times before.

That’s not the film’s fault, but it definitely impacts your viewing.

A negative that was the fault of the filmmakers, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, because it’s so counterintuitive: the characters were too 3-dimensional.

This was a raunchy , laugh out loud, don’t-worry-about-the plot-holes kind of flick and what did they do? They developed rich, emotional backstories and complex motivations for the two lead characters. That’s super swell as an assignment in a screenwriting class, but was it needed here, with this material?  I think this a case where keeping the characters firmly in their lane would have better served the comedy.

Don’t mind me though, I’m a grouch. I still rate this a solid B. Go see it.