‘No Hard Feelings’ has no real originality

Above: Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman star in "No Hard Feelings." (Photo/Columbia Pictures)

Movie review: "No Hard Feelings," directed and co-written by Gene Stupnitsky, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti and Evan Moss-Bachrach. Playing in theaters.

While discussing Celine Song’s recent movie “Past Lives” a couple of weeks ago, I remember thinking of how much I admire the actor John Magaro.

Though you may not recognize his name, Magaro has been working in the TV and film industry since 2005. His credits include everything from episodes of “Law & Order” and the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” to small roles in such feature films as “Lansky” and “The Many Saints of Newark.”

He came to my attention, however, courtesy of his starring in a trio of small films released over the past four years: Not just Song’s “Past Lives” but two films written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, 2019’s “First Cow” and last year’s “Showing Up.” All three gave Magaro the opportunity to work for filmmakers who are the antithesis of today’s popular style of filmmaking.

In other words, filmmakers who on a limited budget work to emphasize character, theme and tone over box-office grabs at action-adventure.

Stories about the film business make it abundantly clear just how difficult it is to maintain an active career, especially for those who work in front of the camera. There are only so many jobs available to a massively huge group of wannabe stars. And the competition is fierce, even for those who have achieved success, both in terms of box office and awards.

Take Jennifer Lawrence, for example. Though she began her career in 2006 by taking small roles in various TV shows, she failed to attract any real attention until she starred in Debra Granik’s 2010 film “Winter’s Bone.” From that critically acclaimed performance, Lawrence graduated to two different movie mega-franchises, “X-Men” and “Hunger Games,” which between them have earned nearly $10 billion.

In between, she’s starred in a number of star-studded productions, from David O. Russell’s 2012 film “Silver Linings Playbook” (for which she won a Best Actress Oscar) to Russell’s 2013 film “American Hustle” and Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 experiment “Mother!” Critical kudos, though, don’t necessarily pay the bills, which may explain why not all of Lawrence’s subsequent choices have panned out. The 2016 sci-fi film “Passengers” for example, or the 2018 spy flick “Red Sparrow” – about which the critic for the Financial Times wrote that Lawrence “acts like a female impersonator riffing through routines.”

OK, that may be a bit harsh, even given Lawrence’s jarring attempts to nail down a Russian accent. Still, the need to have a hit film may be why Lawrence chose to make “No Hard Feelings,” a minor attempt at comedy directed and co-written by Gene Stupnitsky that has her playing a woman hired to bring an introverted teenage boy out of his shell before he heads off the college.

Lawrence plays Maddie Barker, a 32-year-old woman who besides never having left her Montauk, New York, hometown has never had a sustained relationship. Seems whenever things start to get serious, Maddie – for reasons that eventually become clear – disengages.

Yet she is forced to take stock of her life one day when, having not paid the property taxes on the house that her late mother left her, Maddie not only has her car repossessed but she faces having her house seized and sold at auction. So, when she is approached by a couple, Laird and Allison Becker (played, respectively, by Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) who want to hire her to do whatever she can to help their son Percy (played by Andrew Barth Feldman) to – uh – grow up, she agrees. And when I say “grow up,” just imagine the wink-wink that most aptly fits that euphemism.

Lawrence has played comedy before, though her resume doesn’t begin to resemble that of Sarah Jessica Parker, who starred in a similarly themed 2006 movie with Matthew McConaughey titled “Failure to Launch.” Yet while she does manage to evoke a few laughs, along with one extended sequence that features her displaying full-frontal nudity, much of “No Hard Feelings” just feels both ridiculous and derivative.

It may be a truism to say that movie stardom doesn’t come with any guarantees, even for stars who enjoy Lawrence’s stature. But there are always opportunities for someone with talent, as long as the emphasis is on the artform and not simply the payday. Just ask John Magaro.