There will always be Mrs. Robinson from “The Graduate,” but “No Hard Feelings” aims to proposition a new older lady into our film lexicon.

Sure, the film has a title that screams generic 2000s rom-com, and yes, there is still that sticky business that the boy becoming a man in the film

is still only barely legal (this time graduating from high school, not college, eek), a point many may find appropriate for the culture of 1967, but not so much for 2023.

Mrs. Robinson may have seduced Ben Braddock, but Maddie has a much harder time bringing Percy out of his shell,

namely because Gen Z is quick to set hard and fast boundaries for those around them and because Millenials don’t quite have it all figured out yet.

That is what makes “No Hard Feelings” so laugh-out-loud funny and utterly relatable. It’s less about a 30-something taking a paid assignment to have relations with a 19-year-old, though it’s surely about that,

too. The film takes subtle jabs at the various characters who are completely defined by their generation. Jennifer Lawrence, who is in her early 30s and just recently had her first child IRL, looks great as our young Mrs. Robinson, here named Maddie. In the film, Maddie’s appearance is constantly critiqued with snide comments or jokes insinuating that the 32-year-old is so obviously well-removed from the vibrancy of one’s 20s. That she is too ancient to wear short summer dresses and too old to not have her life completely put together. I speak on behalf of most female Millenials when I say, how dare they.

That’s mock indignation with a small dose of authentic incredulity, because if Lawrence, a bonafide “Beautiful Person” with an edge of “every woman,” can’t pass for 28, then there’s certainly no hope for the rest of us. She takes it in stride, however, as she focuses on the task at hand: convincing Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) to live a little,

make friends and maybe even have sex before he leaves for Princeton in the fall. His overbearing Gen X parents (Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti) track Percy’s phone and have made it impossible for him to spread his little nerdy wings and fly the multi-million dollar coop. They’ve put out an ad seeking a social, pretty woman in her 20s who could befriend Percy and open his eyes to life outside of his bedroom walls.

Maddie, who grew up in the sleepy vacation town of Montauk, where the film is set, abhors the rich non-locals buying up the neighborhood. Her car is hilariously towed away by an ex, and without it, she can’t do her second job driving for a ride share app, which is essential to paying her bills. The offer that Percy’s parents make – a car for dating their son – is too good to pass up, particularly as she nears desperation for cash to pay off the rising property taxes she owes.

Though she’s beautiful, Maddie has her own issues with intimacy, getting close to men but pushing them away just as things start to get serious. The game of ping pong that Maddie and Percy play, him as the awkward but realistic new adult and her as the stunted, jaded townie, is irresistible fun, and the walls they’ve both respectively built are joyously picked apart in the most unexpected comedy of the summer.

Writer-director Gene Stupnitsky has crafted a sharp, quick romantic comedy that subverts expectation and takes a premise that would otherwise be “canceled” – woman selling her body for money, prostituting herself to a barely-legal guy who is unaware of her paid advances – and churns out a story that empowers our disastrous female lead, humanizes her motivation and brings to light the plight of young men who are understandably unsure of how to break out of their shell in this age of addictive gaming and helicopter parents.

Broderick and Benanti charm as the clueless parents, and 21-year-old Feldman gives a break-out performance in his first leading role, one that he inhabits and fully makes his own. With experience on Broadway, it comes as no surprise that he even delivers a show-stopping rendition of, what else, the Hall & Oates song “Maneater.”

Calling to mind her Oscar-winning performance in “Silver Linings Playbook,” in which her character was just as mildly unhinged, Lawrence is the one true heart of the film.

With Maddie, she reminds viewers of her power and scene-stealing prowess that highlights her greatest talents: comedic timing, self-deprecating humor and immense likeability. For an actress who has won two golden statuettes, worked with the biggest names in Hollywood, traversed genres and casually brushed off the box office bombs that have occasionally peppered her otherwise very successful career in Hollywood, Lawrence is still America’s sweetheart, and we she-Millenials are glad to claim her as ours.

“No Hard Feelings” is in theaters now.

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Source: Los Angeles Times