Jennifer Lawrence is back and naked in the 2023 legitimate comedy No Hard Feelings. Although I suspect this movie was produced primarily as an excuse for Lawrence to be naked on film, consensually this time, it also has some genuinely funny moments.
I'm not turning my nose up at Lawrence. I watched it to see her naked. I was one of the prudes who respected her privacy when nude photos of her leaked to the internet and I avoided looking at them. Perhaps afraid of seeming a blushing innocent, she plays an earthy, hard drinking woman who likes having frequent one night stands.
The film opens with her ex-boyfriend, a tow-truck driver, repossessing her car. She tries to convince him she really loves him but is thwarted when a burly Italian steps out of her front door in his underwear. So much for that.
But look who it is playing her ex-boyfriend!
Yes, it's Ebon Moss-Bachrach, from The Punisher season one and from that episode of Fringe I talked about last week. The guy is stalking my retinas. He doesn't have a big role.
Lawrence's love interest is a blushing, innocent lad, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), whose wealthy helicopter parents hire her to break his cherry before he goes to Princeton. His comical innocence allows Lawrence to come off as even more rough-edged. At least she's a little better at it than Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
This leads to her dragging the reluctant Percy to the beach one night for some skinny dipping. Three hooligans try to steal their clothes but Lawrence marches out of the sea and beats them all up. This is the only nude scene she does, I suppose because it was felt that she comes off as more empowered in a fight scene than she would in a lovemaking scene.
It's not a particularly funny scene. Nothing feels authentic about the setup. The three hooligans feel like characters from a porn parody. But Lawrence looked fantastic and that was the point. It reminded me of Sex and Furty (不良姐御伝 猪の鹿お蝶), the 1973 Pinky Violence film. In that movie, the veneer of an action film was the pretext for gratuitous nudity. In No Hard Feelings, it's the veneer of comedy. Well, Sex and Fury is an interesting film for other reasons and there were other interesting things about No Hard Feelings.
Lawrence's character took this job because she was promised a free Buick as payment, which she needs for her job as an Uber driver. She's also a bartender and she needs to work multiple jobs because gentrification in Montauk has driven prices way up. I could certainly relate as my hometown, San Diego, has recently become the most expensive town in the United States for basically the same reason. But as the film progresses, it became clear the filmmakers had little real understanding or appreciation for the issue as Lawrence's financial problems turn out to be merely a dreamed up excuse for her repressed psychological issues from an absent father in her childhood. It's the old lazy excuse rich people tell themselves, "Oh, the poor could be happy if they just made the effort." Yeah, that's why the rent in my studio apartment became 90% of the income from the three jobs I was working.
There are a few funny moments in the film. I liked the scene where Lawrence manufactured a meetcute at Percy's workplace, an animal shelter. There was a funny moment where she moves the office couch to be nearer his desk. Mostly, though, there's just one reason to watch this movie and, as the Fool in King Lear said, it's a pretty reason.
No Hard Feelings is available on Netflix in some countries.
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