Why? Because they're put together by people actively trying to make a good movie and not just serving up another product from the assembly line. Even if the subject doesn't seem to be up your alley, you'll find a care and attention to detail that's often lacking in something that might seem like more of a sure thing.
Not to mention they're usually working from a large database of examples that worked: if you're going to make a teen sex romp in 2023, it's not like you're short of classic examples to borrow from. Plus you hardly have to worry that someone else is making a rival that'll come out two weeks before yours and steal your raunchy thunder.
(note to self: write script titled Raunchy Thunder)
In case you'd hadn't picked up on it, No Hard Feelings is one of these films, a test sample released into the wild to see if there's any life left in the teen sex comedy - a genre that dominated the low-budget end of the box office for three decades in living memory but today largely seems like an embarrassing accident everyone would like to pretend never happened. Heard anyone mention Porky's in polite company lately?
The twist here is that while the set-up is pure classic sex comedy - a wimpy guy's rich parents hire a mature hottie to, uh, "guide him into manhood" and give him some vital experience-slash-self-confidence before he heads off to college - the focal character is not the wimp or his sleazy mates (he doesn't even have any sleazy mates), but the hottie, Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence).
Working in a resort town in Upstate New York, Maddie is financially struggling under the weight of property taxes she can't pay off without working over summer as an Uber driver, and she can't work as a driver because her car's just been impounded because of the unpaid taxes. The solution? Seems some rich locals are running an ad on Craigslist offering a free (old) car to any woman who will "date" their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), and away we go.
Pretty much all the obvious questions in 2023 are handled with impressive efficiency: no, lonely boy isn't gay (his parents have seen his porn), and he's not some undatable incel either - just socially stunted due to school problems and helicopter parents and being named Percy.
Maddie herself is refreshingly upfront about the deal: she needs a car, women have sex for all manner of unromantic reasons (the list includes not wanting to be murdered by your date), so as long as the kid isn't a monster, it's a deal.
You'd think that'd pretty much be the end of the movie right there. What heterosexual eighteen year old is going to throw up roadblocks with Jennifer Lawrence hitting on him? But it turns out that she's really, really bad at hitting on guys outside of drunken bar hook-ups (we've already learned she's not big on commitment either), while he is refreshingly sensible and wary about the bizarre situation he finds himself in. Looks like they're going to have to get to know each other first.
Even at their sleaziest, many of the best teen sex comedies had a heart; it was more about finding a connection and love than just getting it on. Here it rapidly becomes clear that Percy is already 95% of the way towards being a decent guy (he even has girls his age interested in him) and what Maddie has to offer isn't really going to get him over the line.
Maddie, on the other hand, is secretly (and not-so-secretly at times) a bit of a wreck, and Lawrence is perfect at making Maddie seem messed up enough to get herself into this situation without tipping over into being a comedy trainwreck. She's not incompetent, she just has issues (and a blunt sense of humor that doesn't really mesh well with the phone-obsessed puriteens that are Percy's peers).
The core of why No Hard Feelings works so well is that both leads are believable, likable, often funny characters you want to see succeed. Even when the jokes don't work there's still reason to keep watching; when the jokes do - and they do most of the time - it's a winner.
The slightly shabby realism of the setting helps ground things further; even the big comedy moments still feel plausible in a way that reinforces the characters' struggles. They might go flying off car bonnets or run naked out of the ocean to punch drunk teens stealing their clothes, but there's no easy answers for the problems they face.
Even when the problem is "I want to have sex and this attractive older woman is throwing herself at me for some unknown reason".
- Anthony Morris
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