I'm Not Touching You - A ‘No Hard Feelings’ Review
Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) and Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) in Columbia Pictures’ No Hard Feelings.
No Hard Feelings = Failure to Launch + Harvey Weinstein.
Written by Kimolee Eryn
We all remember the obnoxious little thing we did with our siblings and friends as kids. The thing that happened just as some game ended with someone being upset. The victim of childish misdeeds would ask to not be touched but in an attempt to save face and rebel against being reprimanded, the offender would hover their hand just near enough to be annoying and say, “I’m not touching you.”
Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillip’s “No Hard Feelings” starring Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman play this game of “I’m not touching you” with sexual impropriety. I dare not use the p-word, lest this becomes an allegation. Nevertheless, despite the chance to see our forever Katniss Everdeen in her most hilarious role since “Don’t Look Up” we were made to grimace at all the scenes where our writers and director bring us to the brink of what, in our real world, would be a sexual misconduct case, and then says, “I’m not touching you,” in that same mischief-ridden way we did as kids before we knew better.
As I watched, I fought the temptation to find something on my phone to focus on. I began to obsess about how old the actor who portrayed Percy was in real life because maybe he was a young-in-the-face 30-year-old, and maybe that would make me feel less complicit in the normalization of inappropriate relationships for sporadically laughing.
"The one true error in the [Me Too] movement was all of the women who weren’t called to the carpet for their crimes because young men are socialized to wear attention from older women as a badge pinned to the sash of their manhood."
I fought the idea of being that person who couldn’t just see something and let it be what it is without turning it into something it wasn’t— and that’s when I realized it. It wasn’t me turning it into something it wasn’t. It already was that something.
In recent years, men in the industry have caught hell (rightfully so) with the Me Too Movement, where their misdeeds caught up to them in the staggering numbers of people speaking out about the discomfort and straight-up pain they’ve been made to feel in their work environments. The one true error in the movement was all of the women who weren’t called to the carpet for their crimes because young men are socialized to wear attention from older women as a badge pinned to the sash of their manhood.
What I expected from this film was a fresh take on 2006’s showdown between Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey in Failure to Launch.
What I got was; “let’s forcefully deflower an awkward, traumatized teenager. But let’s make it be because his parents are asking,” so that I’m not touching you.
“And then after she fails to sexually assault him properly, he’ll start to like her, then it will be consensual,” so still, I’m not touching you.
“and then let’s make sure they never actually do it because that would actually be improper and probably get us canceled” I’m definitely not touching you.
“But it’s cool if they get naked in his childhood bed with his parents in the other room, then he’ll actually attempt to do the deed but it won’t count because, in his inexperience, he didn’t realize it was just her thigh” haha I’m not touching you!
Let’s do the thing where we reverse the roles. Had it been a 30+-year-old man and a 19-year-old high school girl, phones would be ringing, think pieces would be written, and everyone behind the project would be proverbially chased by an angry mob.
The thing is if I told you the story of 32-year-old Maddie Barker and 19-year-old Percy Becker without the lights, cameras, and the Oscar-winning actress, you’d cringe. Love to the comedic stylings of Jennifer Lawrence but, why does the big screen loosen our scruples?
Kimolee Eryn is a poet, author, and storytelling enthusiast turned film and theater critic. For more, visit www.KimoleeEryn.com/reviews.