There’s a rumor in Hollywood that when Howard Hawks contacted Marion Morrison, aka John Wayne, about the movie Rio Lobo he was prepping, Wayne agreed to it but joked he wanted to play the town drunk this time. He had done the same movie twice with Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Some actors get so typecast to a role they surprise you went they do something different.
Take Tom Cruise’s performance as Lestate de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire or Hollywood mogul Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. Heath Ledger surprsed a lot of people with his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight. One of my theater professors said he was often amazed when comics did serious roles. That’s because many comics are laughing through the pain they’re not allowed to show. Imagine if Richard Pryor told you his life story without the humor slant.
In the 2010s, Jennifer Lawrence burst on the scene first with the independent thriller Winter’s Bone, which I didn’t really like and had many issues with, but was nominated for Best Picture that year at the Oscars. Then, there was her role as Mystique in X-Men: First Class, followed by The Hunger Games and her Oscar-winning role in Silver Linings Playbook. She was a movie star and Oscar winner at 22.
Unfortunately, Hollywood really couldn’t think up much after that. Her role in American Hustle belongs to an older actress. And the Hunger Games franchise and X-Men movies had her career going on autopilot for a while. It seemed like too many roles were being written for her to play a bland character. And you can see her frustration with it in her final role as Mystique in Dark Phoenix.
No Hard Feelings is one of those movies that actors want because they’re just too damn tired with the same scripts they’re getting. Wayne could always play cowboys and military figures. But I don’t think he could ever played Shakespeare. Even his role as the Roman Centurion at Jesus crucifixion in The Greatest Story Ever Told has been laughably criticized. I mean, what the hell were they thinking?
But Feelings present Lawrence playing Maddie Barker, a 32-year-old ne’er-do-well who lives in Montauk, New York and has her whole life. She lives in a house that’s inherited from her late mother but she hasn’t paid the taxes. She’s an Uber driver for many of the summer people who come to the Long Island town where they live in wealthy houses and have big boats. Just like the town in Jaws, they’re a summer town and need summer dollars.
Her car is repossessed and she has to roller-blade to work at a bar where she must deal with the rich people who think money can fix everything. Maddie really despises them, but when her friend, Sara (Natalie Morales), finds an ad of a Buick Regal being offer to any woman who will date their son, Maddie becomes interested. She learns that the wealthy couple, Laird and Allison Becker (Matthew Broderick and Laura Bennati), are worried about their son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), who doesn’t have much of a social life and they want someone to “date” their son before he goes to college at the end of summer.
And if you’ve seen this type of movie, you know where it’s headed. Maddie comes on too strong and Percy is hesitant. But eventually as they open up to each other, they get along and even start to have real feelings for each other. This puts Maddie at a crossroads on whether should go through with that the Beckers really want or come clean and tell him what’s going on.
The filmmakers lnow how to walk the line between broad low-brow humor comedy and a compelling story with three-dimensional characters. Gene Stupnitsky, who directed and co-wrote it with John Phillips, also made Good Boys, about a trio of niave tween boys who discover certain things about the world of women and sex they don’t fully grasp. Feelings is kinda like a bizarro Porky’s or American Pie where Percy isn’t too intersted in the other sex or any for that matter. And while his parents may be afraid he’s gay, it never makes them feel bigoted.
I’d argue that Laird and Allison are what’s called “limosine librerals.” They live a high society life thinking they’re open mined but they hire the local people who they exploit as the help. As Maddie goes to meet them, three landscapers are eating lunch on the other side of the gate long their long driveway. And a Latino older woman is their cook. They’re not giving Maddie a great expensive car but an older model Buick Regal that belonged to Laird’s late father.
The sadness is their desire to shield Percy as much as they can has created a dark cloud of social awkwardness that has him bullied to the point he has to change schools. Maddie herself is struggling with her own parental issues that we soon find out. It also explains her behavior in adulthood. While Lawrence is obviously having too much fun playing this role, she doesn’t overdo it. Many people can relate to the the way she acts crashing an after-prom party and interacting with the rich people. She lets the F-bombs fly and doesn’t hold anything back.
While I can’t say much what happens between Percy and Maddie because it ruins the joy of seeing it for the first time, their first interaction is hilarious as she appears dressed in a skin-tight red dress at an animal shelter where he works dressed. What happens next is hilarious as she tries to play a seductive sexy role as he clearly misinterprets her intentions leading to disaster.
Since Stupnitsky has a background in TV with The Office and other sitcoms, he knows how to reign in the actors. At first, I was afraid of where the movie was headed with Sara and Jim. Too often, directors let comics control scenes with ad-libbing that takes away from the pace and flow in recent comedies. Not here. Morales also directed the hilarious Plan B and Arthur was a part of The Second City. They know how scenes should work. So when Hasan Minaj shows up as Maddie’s former classmate turned realtor and comic Kyle Mooney appears as Percy’s nanny (or “manny”) Jody, they appear just enough to move the plot and don’t overstay their welcome.
If anything else, you got to give it to Lawrence to go fully nude in the best unbelievable nude scene by an actor/actress since Julie Andrews flashed her bare breasts in her late husband Blake Edward’s Hollywood satire, S.O.B. Lawrence has proven she can handle comedy when working under the right director. This might be a new path that might prove successful.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 