No prizes for ‘No Hard Feelings'

   

    With or without clothes, Jennifer Lawrence knows how to hold the screen. 

    And, yes, newcomer Andrew Barth Feldman makes a fine teenage foil for Lawrence’s character in No Hard Feelings. 

    Comedies are nothing without contrivance, but some contrivances are better than others, and No Hard Feelings can’t parley a sex-worker premise into a consistently winning entertainment.

     Lawrence plays a down-on-her luck resident of Montauk, Long Island who answers an ad placed by two affluent parents. These overly involved parents want their son to loosen up (i.e., lose his virginity) prior to leaving for his freshman year at Princeton.

    Heaven forbid a shy but bright kid arrive at Princeton equipped only to learn something.

     Employing her substantial gifts for physical comedy, Lawrence plays Maddie Barker, a woman who hates watching wealthy visitors invade her hometown, a seaside heaven that once welcomed folks who weren't seven-figure earners.

     A remnant of older days,  Maddie has fallen behind in her taxes, and might lose the house her late mother left her. 

     She’s desperate when she sees the ad that sets the plot in motion. Wanted: a young woman to help break through the shell of inhibited 19-year-old kid. If she succeeds, Maddie will be given a Buick Regal, a car that might save her career as an Uber driver.

    In the movie's opening scene, a tow-truck driving former boyfriend (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) reposes Maddie's car.

     About those clothes. In a night-time skinny dipping scene, Lawrence does full-frontal nudity as she races from the ocean to confront pranksters who threaten to steal her clothes, as well as the clothes of Feldman’s Percy.

      Necessary? Not really. Maybe it's meant to impress us with its boldness.

      Although most of the movie revolves around 32-year-old Maddie and her relationship with Percy, a small supporting cast doesn't have much to do.

     Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick play Percy’s parents. Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur portray Maddie’s friends.

      It’s pretty easy to guess what’s going to happen. What starts as a crass plunge into sex work for the intimacy-averse Maddie softens as she develops a genuine fondness for Percy, a kid who doesn't want to have sex with someone he doesn't really know.

      Despite a formulaic backdrop, No Hard Feelings, which was directed by Gene Stupnitsky (Good Boys), occasionally detours into moments that feel genuine and Lawrence makes sure that Maddie barges her way through all manner of difficulties. 

     A few moments suggest what might have been. When Percy plays piano and sings his version of Hall & Oates' Maneater, the movie takes a welcome and unexpected turn.

     Some of the movie’s comic high points (Percy riding naked on the hood of a car, for example) strain to be funny, raunchy and memorable. They miss the mark. 

     Too often, No Hard Feelings follows suit. It's not as bad as you might have feared given its premise nor as good as you might have hoped. I guess that adds up to a fair to middling effort.

Catching up with 'Language Lessons'

 Language Lessons

I had no particular interest in a movie in which two people exchange weekly Zoom calls. I've had enough Zoom calls in the last year and a half to satisfy any need I ever had to connect virtually with people -- not that I've abandoned the practice. Screen fatigue partly explains why it took me so long to catch up with Language Lessons, a movie in which a wealthy Oakland resident (Mark Duplass) communicates with his Spanish teacher (Natalie Morales), an engaging young woman who lives in Costa Rica. The language lessons -- a gift from Duplass's character's husband -- aren't exactly met with enthusiasm by Duplass's Adam. Adam already speaks enough Spanish to converse but because he has a couple of years of lessons pending, he goes along with the program. Then, a shocker. Will dies in an accident, and Adam's relationship with Morales’s Carina takes on a different character. It comes as no surprise that the boundaries between student and teacher begin to crumble.   Language Lessons can be viewed as a rom-com in which friendship rather than romance becomes the goal. Duplass and Morales co-authored the screenplay, which Morales directed. She tries to add visual interest by giving Adam a house that invites us to make some guesses about just how well off he might be.  Language Lessons can't entirely overcome the thinness the stems from a two-handed drama conducted via Zoom. For me, the key to the movie's success involves its sincerity, a quality I usually find off-putting but which, in this case, reflects the commitment of two actors who remind us not to overlook something we've been missing: our persistent need for others.

'Stuber' chokes on lame jokes, violence

Crummy jokes and a formulaic premise (a mismatched duo fights crime) don't do much to help Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani salvage something from Stuber, a summer wreck of a movie about an Uber driver (Nanjiani) who winds up racing around Los Angeles with a macho cop. The cop (Bautista) needs all the help he can get because he’s just had Lasik surgery and his vision has yet to snap back into focus. Among the things I didn’t care about: Will Bautista's Vic Manning drop his pursuit of a major drug dealer and attend an art show that features work by his daughter (Natalie Morales)? I also found no reason to transcend indifference to another question the movie raises: Will Nanjiani's Stu be able to open a business with a woman (Betty Gilpin) for whom he harbors a long-standing crush? The screenplay (if you insist on calling it that) makes fun of Uber's driver-rating system but it probably would have done better to spend some time considering film-rating systems. The movie’s violent action isn't exciting and the jokes aren't funny. Put those two together and you come up with a big fat whiff. Oh well, if you happen to see Stuber, there’s a hidden blessing. You probably won’t remember it by the time you reach the parking lot.