Because the advertisements for the new comedy No Hard Feelings have billed the film as an uncouth romp in the grandly off-color tradition of hard-R raunch, ticket-buyers may be somewhat surprised to find a heartfelt love letter to Montauk scrawled in the margins around the dirty doodles.
More than a telegenic setting, the harbor town nestled on the easternmost tip of Long Island really means something to the characters that live there, a blue-collar haven of breezy mornings and balmy nights rapidly growing too expensive for the locals fostering its barnacle-encrusted charm. The born-and-bred resent the tourists that pour in from the city and New York’s affluent suburbs with each summer, all the while depending on their money to make a nut that’ll last through the more sparsely trafficked remainder of the year. The script’s stakes chiefly concern touchy-feely stuff, but it still finds time to speak to the question of how much longer the weatherbeaten homes and salty-dog dock bars can survive in trying times.
