Prancing out of the house in a classic bathrobe and lingerie, her attempts to charm him are interrupted by a shirtless Italian man stretching on her lawn. The movie opens as local tow operator Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), still hurt since Maddie ghosted him after three months of dating, comes to repossess her car. Though Maddie inherited her quaint childhood home on a desirable piece of property, she’s behind on property tax payments, which have tripled along with the town’s median income. These shifting demographics are a source of constant stress and frustration for the diehard locals, like Maddie Barker (Lawrence), a bartender and Uber driver who is barely scraping by after the death of her mother. “No Hard Feelings” takes place in Montauk, a formerly middle-class Long Island beach town that has slowly been taken over by the moneyed elite. It’s like “Never Been Kissed” crossed with “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.” While there are moments of committed physical comedy and a few good line deliveries, the circumstances are neither believable nor outrageous enough to add up. James Gunn Is Tired of ‘Lazy’ Superhero Movies with ‘No Rhyme or Reason to What’s Happening’ Lawrence dons skin-tight dresses soaked in water, takes a punch to the groin in a fully nude fight scene, and practically trips over herself to seduce a young nerd. Though Lawrence, who is also an executive producer of the movie, is working overtime to make the stilted and over-the-top humor work, director Gene Stupnitsky (co-writing with John Phillips) seems far more interested in trying to invert conventional gendered comedy tropes. Starring Lawrence as a broadly sketched caricature of an emotionally stunted, sexually liberated thirtysomething struggling to stay afloat, “No Hard Feelings” tries to resurrect the messy white woman trope that worked so well in films like “Young Adult” and “Trainwreck.” Though by no means a guarantee, there’s a crucial difference between those movies and “No Hard Feelings” - actual women wrote them. But if the uneven sex comedy “No Hard Feelings” is Hollywood’s best effort, it’s not looking good for either one. If anyone could have saved the studio comedy, it might have been Jennifer Lawrence.
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