The one-two knockout punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer has been credited with getting people back into theaters — while that's great for movie makers and fans, it's little consolation for pictures that were just wrapping up their theatrical run as Barbenheimer arrived.
One such movie is No Hard Feelings, a rom-com starring Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman, which came out in June 2023.
The movie follows down-on-her-luck Maddie (Lawrence) who stumbles upon an online advert written by two parents, looking for someone to date their introverted teenage son Percy (Barth Feldman) before he jets off for college.
Now that some time has passed since it was taken from theaters, No Hard Feelings is hitting the streaming circuit. In the US you can buy it digitally on Amazon Prime Video, the Google Play Store, YouTube, Vudu and the Microsoft Store, costing $19.99 on every platform. There's no way to rent it just yet, and neither is there a way to stream it in the UK, with a streaming release hopefully soon.
Sony has a deal with Netflix, and so we could see No Hard Feelings hit the streaming service at some point before the end of the year, but we can't quite say when.
While it was a success at the box office and with critics, No Hard Feelings was overshadowed by big-name movies like Asteroid City, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Extraction 2, The Flash and Elemental, all of which came out within roughly a week of it. With so many high-profile movies to check out, No Hard Feelings was hardly at the top of many people's watch lists at the time.
So is it worth shelling out $20 to see No Hard Feelings now that it's online? Well definitely, as if you can get a group together to watch this raunchy rom-com together, you can split the bill between you. And it's worth it: according to at least one member of the What To Watch team, it's the best movie they've seen so far this year, beating out Oppenheimer, Barbie, Mission Impossible and Cocaine Bear to that title.
That's because No Hard Feelings is that special kind of romance movie that doesn't ask "will they get together?" but, like other special titles La La Land, 500 Days of Summer and I Want You Back, ponders "should they get together?".
Lawrence's performance is particularly spectacular, especially in one dinner scene where you can palpably see Maddie's appreciation and understanding of Percy shift minute-to-minute, when she starts to actually like the boy and then realize the predicament she's in with her fake relationship.
There's more to the story than the ersatz relationship too, with the story also exploring the gentrification of the seaside town of the story, and stand-out comic performances from Natalie Morales, Matthew Broderick and (very briefly) Zahn McClarnon always mean there is something interesting happening.
While flashy Hollywood rom-coms aren't made that often anymore in our franchise-heavy movie world, No Hard Feelings prove that there's still space for fun and meaningful pictures, as long as they feel fresh and interesting. If you're looking for a new film to watch on movie night, this is the one.
