Hard Feelings Review: Directed by Granz Henman, the German comedy Hammerharte Jungs narrates the story of two best friends and their sexual urges towards each other. Starring Tobias Schäfer and Cosima Henman in the lead roles, the movie is produced by Eva Augustin, Steffen Müller, and Oliver Nommsen. The runtime of the movie is 2 hours.

The main cast includes Tobias Schäfer as Charly, Cosima Henman as Paula, Axel Stein as Rudolf, Diana Amft as Paula’s mother, Vivien König as Francoise, Samirah Breuer as Marlene, Louis Jérôme Wagenbrenner as Constantin, Yuna Bennett as Phoebe, Doris Golpashin as Sabina, Jasmin Shakeri as Rektorin Voigt and other notable actors.

– Hard Feelings Review Contains Mild Spoilers (Trigger Warning: Nudity, Foul Language, and Explicit Content) –

Charly is teased as “Charly with No Dick” due to an incident that happened in his childhood. When he was at the pool, a friend removed his pants that revealed to everyone his small wiener. To date, he gets taunted about that causing him severe insecurity. To make things worse, a video of him tripping over and falling becomes viral, and he vents about it to his best friend, Paula.

Paula isn’t the social type but rather a masculine woman who tries to stay strong post her father’s demise. She is the only friend for Charly and vice versa. However, when an odd tragedy strikes both of them, something shocking happens that results in their lives getting changed forever. Now with another set of thought processes to listen to, Charly and Paula find themselves moving forward with their lives with a different mindset while manoeuvring their growing feelings for each other as well as their changing bodies.

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Copy-Paste Sex Education

Netflix’s most famous Sex Education series had a star-studded cast, an amazing plot, and a unique concept. Guess Hard Feelings’ director tried to create a German version with a fantasy touch. Charly is similar to Otis, who is struggling with the V-card. Paula is strong and badass, like Maeve. Moreover, Paula also gets the b*tch title and is often sl*t-shamed like Maeve.

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The only difference in this Hard Feelings movie is that there isn’t a gay boy who accompanies Charly, and there isn’t a sex education service happening. But throughout the whole film, there were too many inspirations from the series present. Most notably, at the climax (hehe), when all the students at the dance event lift their skirts and remove their pants, screaming about their genitals, my mind raced to the famous “It’s My Vagina” dialogue.

I Almost Puked

Certain scenes just baffled me because, come on, this is a movie platform that even kids use. Nudity is fine, but the movie literally showed photos of labia. Man, I don’t deserve to see so many vulvas, I didn’t sign up for this. I respect the human body, but I DID NOT sign up for this. What are you teaching the viewers, though? About genitals? Then why is the fantasy concept added to the mix? To garner some form of reaction? Let the educational docuseries fulfil that purpose; movies needn’t have to, that too a comedy flick.

Speaking of comedy, there were no funny moments that made me laugh, I only cringed, closed my eyes, and almost puked. Particularly in one scene involving a dog and hopefully (for my sanity) some yoghurt, I had to pause because it was so disgusting. Was this scene necessary? If it was intended for humour, honey, no!

Hard Feelings Review: Final Thoughts

Just don’t waste time watching such an absurd movie. There was 0 chemistry between the two leads, the comedy was off, and the concept of the movie is pointless. Hard Feelings is a flick with drugs, sex, party, and bullying – it’s one cliche after another without going deeper into the subject matter or showing something which means something more.

Hard Feelings is streaming on Netflix. Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on the movie!

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