A new comedy script is just itching to resuscitate Jennifer Lawrence’s career!
Genre: Comedy
Premise: A woman who can no longer pay her city’s rising property taxes is forced to become a one-time-only escort for a family trying to get their incel virgin son laid.
About: This is J-Law’s next movie. Writer-director Gene Stupnitsky shot onto the scene with his spec, Bad Teacher. More recently, he wrote and directed the really funny, Good Boys. Co-writer John Phillips wrote the spec, Dirty Grandpa.
Writer: Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillips
Details: 113 pages
When you break it down, there was no way for Jennifer Lawrence’s career to keep going at its sound-barrier-breaking pace. In her very first starring role, the indie movie, Winter’s Bone, she got all sorts of high praise for her performance. This lead to The Hunger Games, which became a gigantic franchise, which led to her David O. Russel collaborations, where she was routinely nominated for Oscars.
There are very few people who attain that kind of hot streak and keep it going for more than a few years. She did it for a decade. So it was only natural that she’d come down to earth at some point. It was just a matter of when.
Russel destroying that great “Joy” script was the first nail in the coffin. Starring in that weird unsettling movie by Darren Aronfsky didn’t help. Passengers was a sci-fi movie that audiences couldn’t connect with no matter how much they wanted to. And Don’t Look Up was a curiosity of a movie, but not much more.
I like Jennifer Lawrence. I think she’s one of the few real people in Hollywood. I love the story about how she’d end her acting days on the “Mother” set by watching episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. How many actors would admit that?
But she’s at a crossroads. She doesn’t really have an identity as an actress. So if she’s going to pull herself out of this slump, it’s going to have to be by picking good scripts and good roles. “No Hard Feelings” is sort of a return for Lawrence to her Silver Linings Playbook days. The question is, is it as good of a script as Playbook? Let’s find out, Buster Brown.
Margot, who’s about 30 (she won’t tell us her true age), is a townie in the upscale summer neighborhood of Montauk. The more rich people who move into town, the higher her property taxes get. And it’s gotten to the point where she’s Uber-driving sunrise to sunset to keep her home.
But then her car is repo’d, which means she can’t make any money. What does she do? Her married couple friends are perusing Craig’s List where they find an odd personal ad. A well-to-do couple are offering a car to a woman who can “date” their 18 year old son.
So she goes in for an interview. The between-the-lines conversation is such: You get the car if you have sex with our son. He’s an incel. He’s going to Princeton next year. They’re afraid that if he doesn’t know how to get girls, he’ll be alone for the rest of his life. But, of course, he can’t know that they’ve hired her. Or else he won’t get any confidence from the experience.
Margot doesn’t have to think twice. She needs that car so she signs on the dotted line. She then heads down to the dog rescue organization where our super-nerd incel, Percy, works. Margot plays the flirt card hard. But Percy is so devoid of awareness when it comes to women that he doesn’t understand what’s happening and tries to get away from Margot.
Thus begins an ironically impossible pursuit of this man. Margot is used to getting laid any time she wants. But Percy is like a sensitive flower. He needs to be comfortable with the person. He needs to like them. He needs to hang out with them a lot. All things that Margot has no interest in doing. She just wants to get the bang finished so she can get that car, yo.
As some of you have no doubt predicted, Margot eventually sees beyond the geeky virgin version of Percy to the sweet inexperienced nice guy. So she starts to like him as a friend. But, of course, Percy ends up finding out what his parents did and confronts Margot. She tries to explain her side but the truth is, there’s nothing good about her side. Which means Margot is left alone to examine who she is at this point in her life and what it is she actually wants.
“No Hard Feelings” has a clever opening scene.
It shows Margot’s car being repo’d in front of her house. Margot comes running out to stop the tower. We then quickly learn she dated this guy then ghosted him. Margot puts on the charm, telling the guy she still likes him, please don’t take her car. He’s softening up until, in the background, we see some hot half-naked guy come out of Margot’s front door and start doing squats in the front yard. That’s enough for our tower. He calls Margot a beeyatch and leaves with the car.
Why is this opening good?
It does two things. First, it sets up Margot. She’s obviously a mess. She’s sleeping with new guys every night, having fleeting meaningless relationships. This gives us a great feel for the character. Second, it sets up the plot. That car is her money-maker. With that car gone, she can’t pay the mortgage.
In addition to this, the writers made the tower a former boyfriend. This added an additional entertaining element to the proceedings. Margot isn’t just spouting out plot-related information like a robot. She’s trying to manipulate this guy via their previous relationship in the hopes of getting her car back. It’s a keen way to hide exposition.
Unfortunately, this opening scene is the high point of the script. Nothing afterwards contains as much thought as was put into this scene. Which is a good lesson, by the way. Yes, we all know our first scene has to be great in order to capture the reader. But that doesn’t give you permission to make every subsequent scene less great.
Use that opening scene as a bar to either meet or exceed.
The script has two problems, and they’re unfortunately major ones, as they revolve around the concept and the character. It’s possible to recover from a weak plot at times. It’s possible to recover from a weak relationship in the movie. But if your problems revolve around the concept and the protagonist? You’re in dangerous waters, my friend.
Look, the concept is just unimaginative. I always say that if your concept could’ve been written 50 years ago? It’s probably not fresh enough. Now this isn’t always true. Stiller’s “Meet the Parents” could’ve been set in 1950 just as it could be set today. But this is more of a comedy built around the concept. The concept is supposed to be the highlight. And I’m not seeing enough razzle-dazzle in a 30 year old who has to sleep with a 20 year old for a car.
I was so convinced that that couldn’t possibly be the finished concept that I kept waiting for the real concept to arrive. I thought maybe Percy would secretly be a vampire or something. But no, that’s the concept.
Which brings us to the second major issue, which is that our main character looks really bad here. We’ve got this slutty selfish woman who will bang anything that walks. And she’s going to take advantage of this poor young socially awkward virgin… to get a car! To get a car!!! There’s no way to sugarcoat how unlikable someone like this is.
I suspect that the writers are going for a “forward thinking” sort of “modern feminism” take here – where we’re supposed to like this girl in spite of her flaws. I mean, we’re okay with guys doing this. So it’s time for us to root for girls acting the same way.
First of all, I don’t buy that logic. If this were reversed and it was a male character, I wouldn’t like him either. Actually, we have a fairly recent comp for this in “Red Rocket.” That older character gets in a relationship with a younger character. The difference was he was a genuinely nice guy. And he wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. He really did like the girl. Margot is all about the deception and only wants to sleep with this kid to get a car.
Why would I ever like or root for someone like that?
It got me thinking – what’s the angle here? Why do they think this is going to work? The only answer I could come up with was that Stupnitsky and Phillips were writing their version of The Graduate. This isn’t a comedy in the vein of Bad Grandpa or Bad Teacher. It’s darker and we won’t really see that until we see the way it’s shot. Cause you can shoot these things and score these things to take on a completely different tone. Like the way Risky Business looks like a teen comedy on the page but is actually quite the dark movie in its execution.
But I don’t know, man. I don’t know how you navigate such a repulsive concept and easy-to-dislike main character. It’ll be a challenge for sure. And it’ll probably come down to J-Law’s performance. We’ll see what happens!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Despite my issues with the script, I give the writers kudos for introducing a non-traditional romance. It’s hard to find any romantic relationship in movies we haven’t seen before. This one I genuinely haven’t seen.
