According to my Letterboxd rankings, my highest-rated movie of 2023 was the gripping documentary Beyond Utopia... but without checking that, when anyone asked me what my favorite film was that year, I'd instantly tell them that it was the Jennifer Lawrence comedy No Hard Feelings. It was recently added to Netflix and I was vindicated to see that it instantly became a big hit.
No Hard Feelings was released onto the UK catalog of this massive streaming service on Friday, March 21 (it was already on Netflix in the US as one of the best movies on Netflix, though it leaves in mid-April). Ever since, it's been on the streamer's list of the top 10 most-streamed movies, and at the time of writing it's #2.
The movie is about a woman (Lawrence) who's struggling to stay afloat financially, when an opportunity comes in that could help her: she's hired by the parents of a socially-awkward teenager (Andrew Barth Feldman) to "date" him for a summer in order to bring him out of his shell before he goes to college.
Lawrence's Maddie takes to her role with gusto, trying hard to flirt with this stubborn loner, but as she gets to know the teen better, she learns to empathise with him, and understand him better, enough that she begins to question the morality of her task. Some have billed No Hard Feelings as a rom-com but that misrepresents the movie in a big way, and it's definitely worth a watch if you're not a fan of rom-coms. Maybe it's better to call it a "friend-com"?
The movie was actually inspired by (though perhaps not "based on") a real-life advert placed in Craigslist for a woman to date a young man, though the rest of the story is all fictional.
It's a funny movie for sure, but it cemented itself as my best-remembered movie of its year for its characters: Feldman's Percy undergoes a touching coming-of-age story while Lawrence gives one of her best performances since Silver Linings Playbook as she slowly understands the depths of her new companion. I remember my favorite sequence being a certain restaurant scene, in which Percy's piano playing evokes a range of emotions in Maddie, and being wowed by how Lawrence showed the multitudes of emotion purely in her facial expressions. Many people also talked about a certain beach scene, which I won't spoil, so it's just as much a surprise for you as it was for me!
"Younger" audiences (well, people close to the 18+ certificate of the movie in the UK and R in the US, a high rating as it's quite a raunchy story!) will also appreciate its even-handed appraisal of the pressures of the coming-of-age experience in the modern day, with the weight society puts on certain expectations.
No Hard Feelings sits at 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I think that's because of how divisive movies billed as "rom-com" can typically be, and so 70% is a great score! The movie was a box office hit (I remember some commentators being surprised at how well it did), and saw Lawrence win nominations and awards at the Golden Globes and People's Choice Awards.
When the movie was added to Netflix in the UK (all the way back in 2023) it was a massive hit for the streamer, dominating the #1 top movies spot for a while, so its success in the UK isn't a total surprise. The only surprise to me is that it's currently being beaten to the top spot by a generic true crime title (Con Mum) although I'm glad it's dethroned Netflix's latest Original movie, The Electric State, with 16% on Rotten Tomatoes (an optimistic score).
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