This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.

While I’m not a frequent Movie watcher, sometimes a movie comes out that’s so good I’m forced to write about it. That was the case with No Hard Feelings, a mostly non-romantic, comedic film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman. Each and every punchline delivered so perfectly that I couldn’t help but laughing (and at times crying) the entire way through. I’m excited for so many movies that are coming out this summer, and No Hard Feelings certainly set the bar high.

In the movie, Maddie (Lawrence) lives in a summer town where tourists have greatly increased the tax and rent values. Despite her mother leaving her a home after she passed away, Maddie is in danger of losing it if she doesn’t find enough money to pay the taxes, fast. That’s when she finds a job listing that seems to pretty much guarantee a car. A set of wealthy parents are looking for a girl to date their son, Percy (Feldman) before he heads off to college the next year.

This is an interesting choice for a plot, especially given the fact that we as a society are generally more alert to problematic age gap relationships than we have been in the past. However, director Gene Stupnitsky managed to pull it off incredibly well. The age gap was ever-present in the relationship between Maddie and Percy, and it was never romanticized in a way that I worried it would be. Additionally, the characters managed to get surprisingly deep, especially for a Comedy.

If you watched the previews, you already knew that Maddie’s mom passed away when she was younger. This plot wasn’t merely leveraged as an excuse for the “main” plot point. Instead, it launched Maddie’s coming of age arc alongside that of Percy’s. It was incredibly fun to watch these two people—one just 19 and the other in her early 30s—figure out who they were at the same time. There was a depth here that I was not expecting, and it made any conflict in the film feel weighty and deserved.

That being said, it is of course still a comedy. I watched the film in the theater, and my entire cinema was laughing out loud at multiple occasions. The jokes delivered without being cringey, and Lawrence proved that she’s able to pull off comedic scenes just as well as she can Oscar-winning performances. I would highly recommend the film for anyone looking for a fun summer flick that’s not explicitly romantic but still has the energy of a romantic comedy.

Find the Movie: Letterboxd