Jennifer Lawrence predicts people will be offended by her upcoming British comedy film, No Hard Feelings. And she’s happy about that.
The trailer starts with Lawrence looking down at Feldman, holding a dog, and saying, “Hey, can I touch your wiener?”
Jennifer Lawrence Says ‘Everyone’ Will Be ‘Offended’ By No Hard Feelings
“I think it’s time for a good old-fashioned laugh and it really is hard to make a comedy where you’re not offending people,” the actress, who also serves as a producer on the film, told the UK’s Sky News Wednesday. “Everybody in some sense will be offended by this film — you’re welcome.”
Coinciding with a growing push-back against cancel culture — which has seen modern comedy standards tighten after decades of tolerance for racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes — Ukranian-American writer-director Gene Stupnitsky’s No Hard Feelings seems intent on pushing boundaries just enough to make people a little bit uncomfortable without going too far.
Lawrence stars as an Uber driver from Montauk, New York who finds herself without a car and in danger of losing her family home. She decides to respond to a Craigslist ad from a pair of wealthy parents who want her to date their 19-year-old son (Andrew Barth Feldman) so he doesn’t start college as a virgin. In exchange for getting their son to come out of his shell, they promise to give her a used car.
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No Hard Feelings is rated R in the US and 15 in the UK.
Feldman also discussed the importance of flirting with lightly offensive humor with Sky News.
“We need to be able to engage with being offended. There was and is like a big overcorrect because we realized there were so many things that we were joking about that we shouldn’t be,” he said. “I think this movie does a really good job of continuing to push limits while still engaging with the conversation that the things that these people are doing are wrong and not a good idea.”
Lawrence agreed.
“Something we learned from the old-time comedies is mean comedy is not really funny… Making somebody feel bad about themselves – other than me making fun of me,” she said. “But the way that we did it is fine, we figured it out.”
Written by Stupnitsky (Year One, Bad Teacher) and John Phillips (The Office, New Girl), No Hard Feelings also features Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, and Matthew Broderick. The film is produced by Alex Saks, Naomi Odenkirk, Marc Provissiero, Lawrence, and Justine Ciarrocchi.
No Hard Feelings arrives in U.S. theaters on June 23.
Main Image: Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings. Photo Credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment.