No Hard Feelings review: Jennifer Lawrence gets raunchy in this surprisingly sweet sex comedy

Justice for the R-rated studio comedy. In the mid-2000s, raunch-coms like The Hangover and Bridesmaids were a theatrical staple, earning laughs and massive hauls at the box office. Now, big studio comedies seem like an endangered species, choked out by sprawling superhero blockbusters and recycled IP. (Rom-coms are already hard to find at the multiplex; R-rated rom-coms are even rarer.) Occasionally, a hit like 2017's Girls Trip will break through, but most adult comedies are relegated to streaming — if they even get made at all.

Which is why No Hard Feelings feels like such an anomaly. Jennifer Lawrence stars in this bawdy Sony comedy, about a 30-something goofball hired to seduce a naïve 19-year-old boy. It's a rare humorous turn for Lawrence, who's mostly built her career on prestige dramas and massive franchises like X-Men and Hunger Games. Here, the Oscar winner finally gets to show off her solid comedy skills, to imperfect but charming result.

Directed by Gene Stupnitsky (Good Boys), No Hard Feelings presents a simple enough premise: Lawrence stars as Maddie, who's lived in bucolic Montauk all her life. But the once middle-class town has been overtaken by wealthy outsiders, and she now struggles to pay the skyrocketing taxes on her late mother's house. After her car gets repossessed (by her ex, a bitter tow-truck driver played by The Bear's Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Maddie turns to Craigslist, where she stumbles upon an intriguing offer: Two loaded parents (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) seek a date for their sheltered teenage son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) before he goes to Princeton in the fall. If a woman agrees to date their son – and as Maddie clarifies, "date" means "date him hard" — they'll hand her the keys to an old Buick rotting in their driveway.

And so, Maddie sets out to corrupt the naïve Percy, to uproarious effect. Feldman, a Broadway alum and Dear Evan Hansen star, is the repressed foil to Lawrence's chaotic temptress, and Lawrence attacks the role with gusto, weathering accidental mace attacks and skinny-dipping shenanigans. In another decade, it's easy to imagine Lawrence forging a career as a dependable rom-com lead, a goofier Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan. She's always had solid comedic timing — see her Oscar-winning turn in the romantic sort-of-comedy Silver Linings Playbook — but here, she gets to go full bonkers. At one point, she swaggers out of the ocean fully nude, attacking a group of taunting teens in a ridiculously brutal brawl.

Marketing has leaned hard into the film's raunchy R-rating, but in reality, No Hard Feelings has a much softer center. Maddie is lost and listless, desperately clinging to her late mother's house even as her hometown evolves around her. Percy's awkwardness is played for laughs, but he's also genuinely sweet, advocating for shelter dogs and forging a tender friendship with Maddie. Not every joke lands: There's an unevenness to some of the more outlandish gags, and it's hard not to compare the film to similar (and more subversive) fare like Trainwreck or Girls Trip. Still, No Hard Feelings is a welcome addition to a dwindling genre — and a reminder that Lawrence is one Hollywood's best (and funniest) leads. Grade: B

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Jennifer Lawrence tries to seduce an introverted teen in raunchy new No Hard Feelings trailer
• Jennifer Lawrence clarifies comment about female-led action films: 'It came out wrong'
• How a Craiglist ad inspired Jennifer Lawrence's No Hard Feelings: 'I died laughing'