The death of the R-rated sex comedy

After a few years in which she has been largely absent from theaters — her appearance in Netflix’s climate-change black comedy Don’t Look Up aside — Jennifer Lawrence is returning this week with, of all things, a raunchy, R-rated sex comedy, with the punning title No Hard Feelings. Judging by its marketing materials, it is a twenty-first-century spin on Tom Cruise’s star-making role in Risky Business, focusing on an older woman (yes, Lawrence, at thirty-two, is now classed as such by Hollywood) who is hired by a family via Craigslist to “date” their socially awkward nineteen-year-old son Percy, “date him hard,” and thus introduce him to the adult world.

The promotional posters have the words “pretty” and “awkward” above, respectively, Lawrence and her co-star, Andrew Barth Feldman, and the trailer promises a near-the-knuckle raunchfest of sorts, with a scene in which Lawrence knocks down a door at a party and snarls, à la Jack Nicholson in The Shining, “Did you fuck him?” to a semi-clad girl in bed with Percy. It is not likely to win Lawrence her second Best Actress Oscar, but it looks to be amusingly disposable entertainment, no doubt with the obligatory feminist twist that these pictures now have to contain.

It is surprising No Hard Feelings has been made at all. Around ten years ago, such would-be daring sex comedies with titles like Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached combined A-list stars with the promise of titillation, which in practice meant that famous actors swore a lot and kept their underwear on in the bedroom scenes. Yet in a new, censorious age, where once-beloved stars have been canceled for their sexual proclivities and where the shadow of #MeToo hangs over any onscreen escapades, it seems remarkable that even the likable Lawrence would become involved with a potentially risky business proposition such as this one. At a time when films are constantly failing commercially, even supposedly can’t-miss ones, you would be a very confident studio indeed to assume that this will be a success.

There is precedent. A gay-themed romantic comedy, Bros, came out last year and bombed, demonstrating that mainstream audiences are not ready for When Harry Met Larry or the equivalent. The strangely ultraviolent Jennifer Lopez romcom Shotgun Wedding imagined what would happen if the traditional tropes of the genre were combined with those of the action film: it was not a triumph. Only last year’s Ticket to Paradise, which combined the star power of Julia Roberts and George Clooney, was commercially successful, and that was in large part through nostalgia for a simpler, kinder age, where a PG-13-rated film with exotic locations and mainstream stars slightly past their commercial peak could make nearly $200 million at the global box office. There was no nudity.

Even a few years ago, matters were different. Bridesmaids disproved the bizarre adage that “women aren’t funny” in some style — not only was it an enormous commercial hit back in 2011, but it was even nominated for Oscars for its screenplay and for Melissa McCarthy’s outsized, scene-stealing performance. Yet by then, the era of teen-centered raunch that had begun with American Pie in 1999 had ended; by the time that the series was revived for a final fling in 2012 with American Reunion, its sordid, infantile pranks seemed old hat indeed. (It’s amusing that Jennifer Coolidge — the woman who popularized the acronym “MILF” — has gone onto considerably greater success than any of her younger co-stars, thanks to her award-winning appearances in The White Lotus.)

In its place were Judd Apatow’s more measured pictures, such as Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which would still attract opprobrium today for the lenience with which the immature boy-men are treated, and the comparative harshness that awaits the shrewish women who will not simply surrender themselves for their would-be paramour’s attentions. Yet the era of leering prurience, in which actresses would disrobe for the characters’ (and audience’s) gratification, had come to an end. The trailer for No Hard Feelings teases a skinny-dipping scene for Lawrence and Barth Feldman, but in this new age of intimacy coordinators and sensitivity coaches, it seems completely normal that Barth Feldman might say “it was so incredibly safe… everyone was so kind, constantly checking in that we were OK.”

It is clearly a better attitude for movies to take that characters in these films, disposable though they are, are not simply public property to be ogled, but real people with feelings and agency. This does also mean, however, that the wild abandon of bygone films has vanished entirely; no wonder that Some Like it Hot, one of film’s most successful sex comedies, has now been revisited for Broadway with far heavier emphasis on the dignity of gender-fluidity, rather than its being played for laughs. If No Hard Feelings is indeed a hit, then perhaps there will be a new wave of films that take greater risks and, perhaps, come close to the spiky coldness of Restoration comedy (as the likes of Warren Beatty’s Shampoo once did), with all its complexity and richness. But we shouldn’t count on it, alas.

Still, until then, at least we have an example in the wild of an endangered species, the R-rated sex farce. We should treat it with the delicacy and fascination that any creature that might be the last of its kind merits.