Category: Gene Stupnitsky

NO HARD FEELINGS

By Marc S. Sanders

Jennifer Lawrence goes the route of Farrelly Brothers comedy with No Hard Feelings.  She’s a thirty something gal named Maddie Barker who gets by sleeping around with the men of Montauk, New York while being an Uber driver and a bartender on the side.  It’s easy enough to do because her mother left her with a completely paid for house.  What she didn’t account for was taxes, and now that her car has been towed away (and shortly after totaled – just watch) and the past due bills start arriving, she’s got to find some means to uphold her Uber career so she doesn’t lose her house.  Problem is the best Uber drivers drive cars.

A seasonal annoyance of Montauk occurs when the ultra-wealthy WASPS come to reside in their summer homes.  A lot of these folks are helicopter parents for their spoiled kids who have futures awaiting them at Ivy League universities.  One such couple is portrayed by Laura Benanti and an especially flaky Matthew Broderick.  (Yes!  Ferris Bueller!)  Maddie answers the ad to literally get their dweeby son primed and ready for Princeton college life by sleeping with him and breaking him out of his shell of just video games and volunteer work at the homeless pet shelter.  In return, they will transfer the title over to a run-down Buick sedan that Maddie can own outright and catch up on her bills.  If life were only this easy.

The kid is Percy Becker played by newcomer Andrew Barth Feldman.  He’s quite good in this role and I imagine when he started on the first few days of filming he felt as awkward as he appears next to the confidence and experience emulating from Oscar winning Jennifer Lawrence.  You could never imagine pairing these two up in a film.  I mean, like they wouldn’t even work as a brother and sister.  Still, the comedic premise is so absurd like a Farrelly Brothers movie, that you just have to go with what this picture offers. Thankfully, the situations are hysterical.

It’s not easy for Maddie to break Percy of his introverted personality.  Poor kid doesn’t know how to drink or how to dress at an island bar.  He has no friends. He definitely doesn’t know how to talk to girls and even a naked Maddie accompanying him on an empty beach in the middle of the night for skinny dipping has disastrous results. 

Like a lot of romantic comedies, Maddie believes she just has to quickly lay this kid, collect the prize car and no feelings of love or like will ever get in the way.  Not so fast.  Soon, we get to see the attributes Percy possesses, and he’s hard to get off Maddie’s mind.  I read that Feldman played the title character in Dear Evan Hanson on a stage tour for a year. I can completely envision that after witnessing Percy perform a sultry rendition of Hall & Oates “Maneater” on the piano.  Close ups go over to Lawrence watching from across the room and I don’t believe she was acting.  This kid is a talented performer.  Suddenly, Lawrence and Feldman are great scene partners doing some very fine work together.

I hope to see Andrew Barth Feldman in more films.  He can do both drama, and of course comedy.  Moreover, Jennifer Lawrence has officially widened her range.  Her resume is certainly eclectic and this film only enhances her record.

The premise of No Hard Feelings is near impossible to swallow.  Fortunately, the gags that follow and especially the chemistry between the two leads allow for a sweet story with broad, raunchy,  slapstick R-rated material.  Many of the more successful comedic films followed this formula like Coming To America and There’s Something About Mary.  No Hard Feelings has just enough substance to be grouped within that fraternity. 

GOOD BOYS

By Marc S. Sanders

Jacob Tremblay, Keith L Williams and Brady Noon are the sixth grade Good Boys, a film directed and co-written by Gene Stupnitsky and produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. This is a hard (very hard) R rated kids comedy adventure. Call it a prequel to Superbad.

Before sixth graders become aware of beer pong parties, the most important thing on their mind is perhaps a kissing party. At least it’s most important to Max (Tremblay). For Lucas (Williams, the MVP of the three kids) he’s broken up to learn his parents are getting a divorce. Thor (Noon, who needs a few more acting lessons) is feeling insecure on a scale of social popularity when all he really wants is to audition for the spring musical.

After Max loses his dad’s valuable drone while the boys are spying on some high school girls in a backyard, they end up stealing their girls’ “mollie” in an effort of blackmail to get the drone back. There’s the spine of the story.

My colleague Miguel E Rodriguez reviewed this film last year. He praised the picture for not making the gags the point of the film. However, I can’t agree with that observation. The thin plot of Good Boys serves as opportunity for one gross out or ridiculous gag after another. Okay. So the boys are unfamiliar with sex toys, particularly “a-nahl beads” or they mistake dad’s sex doll for a “CPR” doll. So when Max practices kissing on the doll, he’s confused as to why the lips feel so sticky.See, I found the main story to be getting the drone back before Max’ dad discovers it’s missing. So then why must I be subjected to imagining how much the beads smell like shit? Why must I see the kids try to cross a busy highway to get to the mall? These are detours, away from the plot. Yeah, they’re funny, but as funny as they are, they push me away from the ends that will justify their means.

An epilogue features one of the kids faking a snort of cocaine. Why? Miguel: these are set up gags. These are exactly the opposite of how you describe their ultimate purposes. None these jokes serve the plot. When I watch “The Goonies,” I get kids who pursue a chance at obtaining a treasure. The mission gets held up by booby traps. Those traps serve as obstacles to the mission at play. Anal beads and a sex doll are not obstacles. They are diversions.

If you want gags to come genuinely from the story then don’t make the mollie or the drone the MacGuffin. Make the sex toys the MacGuffin. These are no more than funny gags. Ultimately, they’re Saturday Night Live skits forced into a film. I laughed yes, but I also grew tired of these bits, that occurred every three to four minutes. What about the drone???? What about the mollie???? I dunno. Maybe with a better trio of boys, I’d be more invested in the film.

Tremblay is the most well known actor (from Room with Brie Larson). Brady Noon is supposed to be the wanna be rebel (he gets an earring), but the sensitive guy on the inside. Williams is the kid who still adheres to good behavior and is not so ready to move on from sleepovers with “Magic The Gathering” card games. Keith L Williams is the best performer of the three in fact. Great physical comedy and timing, as well as some authentic anguish. When the other two boys cry, it’s terribly, TERRIBLY, fake. The problem is the chemistry of three boys is lacking.

Stupnitsky’s coverage of scenes look like rehearsals before the real cameras started rolling. At times, it feels as if the boys, particularly Noon and Tremblay, are trying to think of their next line. When they can’t get the line right, I sense a fast thinking improv that includes shouting the F word. That’s not very funny for very long.

Foul mouthed pre teens are nothing new. Seen it before in The Bad News Bears and once again I say The Goonies. I’m not going to salute Good Boys because these three kids are given carte blanch to utter the F word on an endless cycle. That gets old. Boys uncover sex toys and handle them and naturally act perplexed by what they’ve found; okay, but is there anything more to that?

By no means is Good Boys acceptable for kids to watch. On the other hand, those that can watch a hard R rated flick like this might get a little tired of its material. I know I did. So then who is this film really aimed for? Best guess I could come up with would be a guy I know named Miguel E Rodriguez.