Bold, bawdy 'No Hard Feelings' blends laughs with lessons in forgiveness

“No Hard Feelings” - ★ ★ ½

I went into a press screening of “No Hard Feelings” expecting something crass and bawdy.

After all, the story concerns a young woman who accepts a job from extremely wealthy (and clueless) helicopter parents to end the virginity of their sheltered, introverted 19-year-old virgin son before he leaves for Princeton University.

What I saw was something with lofty aspirations to be the next “The Graduate,” but without the wit, nuance and intelligence.

It packs a lot of easy, guilty laughs, and an unexpected twist attesting to the positive power of forgiveness.

I'm not sure if writers Gene Stupnitski and John Phillips intended their sex comedy to hold such lofty purpose, but by the end, these characters exemplify loads of forgiveness for the daily shortcomings they commit against each other. They need to.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Maddie, a financially strapped 32-year-old Uber driver and restaurant worker in New York state's Montauk, Long Island. Her car has been repossessed and her family house is in danger of foreclosure.

Maddie answers an ad from Laird and Allison Becker (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti), uber-parents who have protected their son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) so well he possesses zero coping skills or social abilities. These parents turn out to be the weakest components of the movie. They aren't particularly funny or interesting. Just failures as parents. So why doesn't the movie point this out?

“I'm not a sex worker,” Maddie says to the Beckers during their job interview, even though they are giving her a new Buick in exchange for “dating” Percy. Self-deception is only one of the issues she must address.

Maddie shares a couple of musical montages with Percy as they forge a wavering friendship. And she soon drops her plan to quickly have her way with him and move on to her next short-term romance.

Percy, played with beguiling innocence and good will by a likable Feldman, may be unprepared for life, but he possesses a pure heart and an idealized view of love and sex. You want the best for him.

Normally, the protagonist of a coming-of-age story like this one - let's say “The Graduate” - would be the immature, repressed Percy.

Here, making Maddie the lead shakes up the formula, and it allows Lawrence an opportunity to put her character through impressive dramatic paces ranging from glib meanness to wounded guilt.

She also supplies the movie's most comical scene by rising completely naked out of the ocean like an avenging kraken to wreak havoc against the three beach bullies who would dare steal her clothes.

In the film's softer surprise, Maddie prods Percy into sitting down at a restaurant piano and performing a song. He chooses the 1982 Hall and Oates hit “Maneater,” rendering the lyrics with disarming clarity while commenting on the obvious reference to Maddie.

Still, it's not a close contender to “The Graduate.”

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti

Directed by: Gene Stupnitski

Other: A Columbia Pictures release. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations. 103 minutes