Comedy is quite the interesting genre in the realm of film. Comedy, just like horror is such a subjective genre. Some things are hilarious to some and other things are not. When people discuss comedies, there’s usually a thirty year stretch they use as reference, almost like they were the glory days of the genre. Those three decades being the 80s, 90s and the 2000s specifically the front end of the decade. The comedy genre went through an interesting development from around 2008 to 2019 hypothetically as there was probably a film that started and ended this fluctuation but I can’t think of the specific film. Superbad may have been the film that set off this period in the Hollywood comedy. During this period of time, we saw comedies go as far as they could and many of those films turned off audience members based on how wild and irreverent they ended up being. The Hangover and Superbad are two examples of that type of comedy. While I enjoy both films, I see what elements of those films would turn people off. At some moment in the 2010s, the whole idea of the genre went through a shift that saw those films in the comedy genre turn from outrageous to monotonous. With the flip of a switch, comedies weren’t funny, they followed the same pattern and they were very afraid to say anything that could be perceived as offensive. During the glory days of the genre, the creatives found a balance between the two ideas. The films were funny and boundary pushing, but never too far. The films took chances and deviated from the norm which made them so popular.
Comedy is probably the genre that has the most opinions around it, as many people reminisce about the good old days and wish that the genre went back to that. That’s where the director comes in, that being Gene Stupnitsky who is mostly known for writing episodes of The Office. He actually wrote my favourite episode, that being “Scott’s Tots”. That episode worked primarily on the uncomfortable nature of the plot which made it humorous yet layered. Gene’s only other film was one called “Good Boys” which similar to this film was built off an outrageous concept. The question is, did this film work in the realm of comedy.
No Hard Feelings follows Jennifer Lawrence as she plays a woman in need of a car. She decides to date an eccentric couple’s nineteen year old son. The deal is that if she is able to get him out of the shell, she gets the car. What follows is a multitude of scenes where Lawrence and the son get into crazy situations as she effectively tries to deflower him for a car.
As stated before, the premise is outrageous. While in Good Boys we saw a group of close to middle schoolers get into wild shenanigans, this one takes a different approach that is as off putting. The idea of Lawrence in a film trying to seduce a soon to be college kid has already set some people off, similar to four years ago when he released Good Boys. Gene works well with comedies that ride the line between acceptable and just plain wrong, which I admire in his body of work. This is the type of comedy that most would be scared to make based primarily on the plot itself. My fear for this film is that many will lump it in with other uncomfortable age gap flicks like Harold and Maude or Licorice Pizza. Similar to those flicks, the film is much more than just the gimmick that people are running with. While No Hard Feelings does nothing real new and groundbreaking with the genre, it uses some real human concepts in the subtext similar to the greats like John Hughes.
I got out of a screening of Planes Trains and Automobiles with Janelle a couple years back and we had this very discussion about comedies. The conclusion we came to was that comedies aren’t digging into the human concepts at the heart of the comedy and they much prefer to reference things to get a quick laugh. No Hard Feelings thankfully doesn’t go down the path that many recent comedies do and is much deeper than even I was expecting. While the laughs were there, the heart was also intact in a way that I have only seen in a handful of comedies recently. The film that comes to mind is Bros, another film that plays off a somewhat wild premise that also gets super deep when the time comes to bring in the drama. No Hard Feelings has definitely solved the problem that many comedies are suffering from recently.
The film wouldn’t be as funny without the performances. Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman (who plays the son) are absolutely magnificent in this. This was one of those comedies that I was laughing at the raunch, but there were also little mannerisms the actors portrayed or even some line readings that had me equally amused. That is another thing that has been hugely overlooked in recent studio comedies, the comedy that you find in the little things. To bring John Hughes back into the equation, he found humour in the little elements of a scene while also delivering a story with a huge amount of heart and realism. There's even a scene that is a callback to Ferris Bueller's Day Off which is quite comedic seeing Matthew Broderick in this film as the scene is almost a turning of the tables. Those who saw the film will know exactly what I'm talking about. This film has those moments where i’m laughing at how Andrew said something or maybe the way that Jennifer moved into the shot. Some of these scenes didn’t even have a big punchline, but they were comedic nonetheless. The film does deliver on the wild comedy as well as you see Lawrence go on this journey to “man up” this kid in pursuit of a new car for herself, but little things keep getting in the way. There’s a specifically outrageous moment that is ultimately a fight scene. Another moment of extreme chaos includes a train. While the film plays around with outrageous humour, it also features some great human comedy that is only possible with the great performances from Lawrence and Feldman.
Comedies have been in a weird phase of evolution in the past decade and a half and No Hard Feelings is probably the answer to the question. It’s not afraid to do things that might turn off a big chunk of the audience but it also has some human components that everyone could find relevant and relatable. I saw one person note that if the score for a comedy is mixed, than you’re in good hands and there’s a very real truth to that. Comedy is a super subjective genre, so if you have a comedy that everyone agrees on, it’s too tuned into the general audience. No Hard Feelings breaks past the generic style of comedy of late and delivers a film that brings comedy to its glory days. It’s not going to be for everyone and that’s why it works so well in this realm of filmmaking.
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