No Hard Feelings might be the first R-rated comedy you've seen on the big screen in a while. A genre normally destined for a straight-to-streaming fate, this innuendo-laden, bawdy movie is bucking the trend. "Every filmmaker wants their movie seen in a cinema," director Gene Stupnitsky tells us when we catch up with him at a London hotel. "Sitting in a darkened room with strangers... comedy is like horror in that sense. It's a communal experience." And, on the surface, No Hard Feelings could seem like a horror movie – or, more specifically, a prude's worst nightmare.
Helmed and co-written by Stupnitsky (also known for his work on The Office and Jury Duty), No Hard Feelings stars Jennifer Lawrence as Maddie, a loud and lude Uber driver whose car is repossessed when she fails to pay property tax on her house, inherited from her late mother. Facing bankruptcy and desperate to keep her home, with all the sentimental value it carries, she comes across a Craigslist posting for a car with an unusual catch. The price? Dating a wealthy older couple's socially anxious 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), to bring him out of his shell before he goes to college (or, in his parents' words, "date his brains out").
