PREMISE

On the brink of losing her home, Maddie finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.

THE GOOD STUFF

LAWRENCE AND FELDMAN- This would be an incredibly bad movie if the two lead characters had no chemistry. Lawrence has been in plenty of better movies than this with actors that she had NO romantic chemistry with. It happens a lot more than we would like to think. What her and Feldman having this movie is really, really, saccharin level sweet and only gets raunchy to an extent.

Feldman really is a breakout here in a lot of ways. Yes, there is the innocent virgin stereotype here, but the strength of his performance really comes in Act 3 when he’s able to shut that off a little bit and turn just a tad bit more serious.

Gene Stupnitsky– I don’t necessarily know if I would go as far as to say that Stupnitsky is developing his own Apatow-ish style or anything like that, but his name is starting to become synonymous with the kind of raunchy, foul-mouthed comedies that we saw in the 2000s. The trailer for this movie is selling a sex comedy straight out of the 1980s but it has a lot more heart and is a lot smarter than those films.

So many times during this film, it felt like it was going to say or imply something that would get the kind of internet criticism that might cause controversy. I’m not going to go as far as to say that this is a risky movie to make in these days and times, but Stupnitsky seems to be the one that’s willing to tow that line of risque humor, and he deserves a lot of credit for doing that. The first two acts of this film are consistently funny as well. Strange as it is to say, but it’s becoming weird when a comedy is just consistent these days. Credit for that too.

THE BAD STUFF

The 3rd act– Amidst all the tropes this movie just so happens to ignore when it comes to its characters, it turns out to be two good-natured of a film to do any kind of unpredictable things in the third act of the film. It is here where the film behaves as if it must go from sex comedy to romantic comedy in order to safely land the plane, so to speak… even though the plane is landed in a non-traditional way.

The really great comedies, whether they be sex comedies or not, tend to end with an exclamation point, whether it be comical or for shock value, and this just…doesn’t.

THE UGLY STUFF

Nothing really.

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I saw this movie in a practically sold-out auditorium, and I gotta say that I’m grateful that this film was consistently funny enough to keep the audience rolling. I’m not saying that there aren’t funny movies anymore, but the R-rated adult-themed comedy is quite the endangered species.

This is not an all-time great R-rated comedy, and I’m pretty sure if you questioned the audience immediately following the movie, they would tell you exactly that. However, I’m pretty sure what they would tell you is that it’s just really nice to see this kind of a thing in a movie theater again. This is well worth the price of admission if you’ve missed this kind of comedy.

NO HARD FEELINGS is in theaters now.