INDECENT PROPOSAL (NO HARD FEELINGS)

Comedy is unquestionably a tightrope walk.

Get it right and you'll be adored.

Get it wrong and you'll be derided.

Tone is everything - especially if you're prepared to mine bad taste in pursuit of laughs.

Go too far and you could end up repulsing your audience.

Mel Brooks, Chris Morris, Larry Sanders, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Stiller and Ricky Gervais have all walked the tightrope successfully.

They have also endured the occasional wobble.

But there's also been major misfires - spectacularly ill judged comedies that are difficult to erase from memory.

Johnny Knoxville in 'The Ringer' comes to mind and Tom Green in 'Freddy Got Fingered'.

And then, there's the nadir - Robert de Niro, Zac Efron and Aubrey Plaza embarrassing themselves in the loathsome 'Dirty Grandpa'.

This leads us to director Gene Stupnitsky, the Ukrainian born, Chicago raised director of the 2019 comedy 'Good Boys' in which Jacob Tremblay, Keith L Williams and Brady Noon starred as naive, potty mouthed sixth graders.

A writer and occasional director of episodes of the US version of Ricky Gervais' 'The Office,' he penned episodes of the Stephen Merchant sitcom 'Hello Ladies,' Frankie Shaw's South Boston comedy 'SMILF' and the Amazon Freevee fake trial show 'Jury Duty'.

For his second feature as a director, Stupnitsky has landed Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Lawrence as his star as well as his executive producer.

Matthew Broderick and Ebon Moss-Bachrach from 'The Bear' have also been recruited.

What they have come up with is an alleged comedy so misguided and in such poor taste you really have to ask: what the hell were they all thinking?

Jennifer Lawrence stars as Maddie Barker, a 32 year old native of Montauk who is struggling to make ends meet as an Uber driver and a yacht club bartender.

Owing property taxes on the home she has inherited from her recently deceased mum, her car is repossessed and towed away by a former boyfriend, Moss-Bachrach's Gary, depriving her of one source of income.

Going on Craigslist, she spots an unusual post from a couple, Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti's Laird and Allison Becker.

The Beckers are the kind of couple Maddie despises.

They're hugely wealthy out of towners who have pushed up property prices in Montauk, forcing the locals either to sell up or move away because they can no longer afford to live there.

Nevertheless she meets them because they are dangling the possibility of gifting a Buick to a woman who is willing to date their nervous, very withdrawn son, Andrew Barth Feldman's Percy.

Feldman's character is a super nerd bound for Princeton.

He plays video games in his room and volunteers at a local dog shelter.

Allison and Laird hope he will be brought out of his shell before he leaves high school.

With her eyes fixed firmly on the four wheeled prize, Maddie goes to the dog shelter and lays on the flirtation way too thick.

Insisting she drives Percy home, he panics thinking she is trying to kidnap him and pepper sprays her.

Maddie, however, is relentless in her pursuit of Percy who is flattered and confused by all the attention she is lavishing on him.

A virgin, he tries to slow down her aggressive sexual advances, insisting he wants to go on a proper date first and really get to know Maddie before they end up having sex.

Percy's sweet nature draws out a lot of affection for him in her.

However the clock is ticking on Maddie getting her hands on a Buick and earning enough money to save her family home.

Stupnitsky and his fellow screenwriter are clearly aiming for a 'Superbad' and 'Trainwreck' meets 'The Graduate' vibe.

What they end up with is something much more creepy.

Throughout the movie, Lawrence's character essentially has no scruples and is basically prostituting herself for a car.

Broderick and Benanti's parents are little better, dangling a Buick at her as an incentive with little regard for the sensitivity of their son.

Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur as Maddie's close friends Sara and Jim are in on the act too.

The couple, who are struggling to make ends meet in Montauk, seem remarkably untroubled by what Maddie's doing and do very little to stop her.

It's hard not to set aside the immorality at the heart of Stupnitsky's film but even if you try, the puerile nature of the humour is a huge black mark.

One scene finds Maddie coaxing Percy into going skinny dipping with her in the sea, only to have their clothes stolen by obnoxious rich kids.

Lawrence's character rushes naked out of the water to confront the teens, attacks them and is then kicked in an intimate part of her body in the resultant melee.

This is meant to be funny.

However it's about as funny as getting kicked in the unmentionables.

The sequence ends with a naked Percy dangling off the bonnet of a car driven by Maddie a la 'Father Ted' but this version of that gag is nowhere near as funny.

Lawrence is clearly aiming to be regarded as a comic actor on a par with her friend, Amy Schumer who is also prepared to mine the depths of bad taste for laughs.

However this foray into comedy badly backfires and it's ultimately depressing spectacle.

It is so depressing, it's actually on a par with de Niro's woeful attempt at gross out humour in 'Dirty Grandpa' - besmirching a largely accomplished career.

It's hard to believe watching 'No Hard Feelings' that this is the same actress who was unlucky to miss out on an Oscar nomination this year for the superb drama 'Causeway'.

Benanti, Broderick, Feldman, Morales, MacArthur and Jordan Mendoza as Percy's fellow dog shelter volunteer should hang their heads in shame as well.

It's a puzzle why Ebon Moss-Bachrach is even in the movie.

He's barely onscreen and even when he is, his part is so thinly written he just mumbles and looks miserable.

Moss-Bachrach's presence only underscores how poor 'No Hard Feelings' is as a comedy, given his superb comic timing in 'The Bear'.

There's also a rather obvious nod to Broderick's past with a specific reference to a key scene in John Hughes' 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'.

However this again only serves as a reminder of how lame Stupnitsky's comedy is.

This film isn't fit to clean Ferris Bueller's boots.

Ultimately, it's the creepiness of the central concept of 'No Hard Feelings' that dominates perceptions of the film.

And if you think I'm being a snowflake, just imagine the outrage if the genders were reversed.

Imagine the revulsion if this was a movie about a 32 year old man trying to seduce a 19 year old girl in similar circumstances.

Some would argue we had 'Blame It On Rio' in the 1980s with Michael Caine's 50 year old drawn to Michelle Johnson's 17 year old.

That was creepy too and if that film were to be remade today, it would rightly be condemned.

It would be labelled as extremely disturbing. So should this.

Stupnitsky has somehow managed to make 103 minutes in the cinema deeply uncomfortable.

While the film has made a decent profit, that's hardly a recommendation.

So did 'Dirty Grandpa' but who in their right mind has been clamouring for a sequel to that?

('No Hard Feelings' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on June 21, 2023)

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INDECENT PROPOSAL (NO HARD FEELINGS)

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