-
No Hard Feelings
This 1-hour 43-minute movie with Jennifer Lawrence is fantastic. It’s one I’ll want to watch several times so I can take it apart and put it up on a story board and figure out why the story structure and characterization and character arcs work so well. JL plays a downtrodden 30-something woman whose beachfront hometown is being taken over by wealthy snowbirds whose summertime presence is depended upon for income. But the rich entitled snowbirds are also buying up properties and gentrifying the area, raising property values and prices so that hardworking folks who were born and raised there are being forced out. Hard knocks have hardened her on the outside, but she still has a good heart. She’s lost almost everything, and the movie opens with an ex-boyfriend tow-truck-driver she ghosted months ago repossessing the UBER car she depends on for income. Making ends meet have gone from difficult to impossible, and she’s now about to lose her home. A wealthy snowbird family places an ad promising to give a like-new used Buick to an attractive 20-something woman who’ll agree to date their nerdy high-school graduate son so he’ll have the confidence to succeed at Princeton in the fall, and she agrees to take on the task. (Like Failure to Launch but way better.) What I love most about this movie is the characterization. She is rough, edgy, prickly, and rightfully pissed off. He is awkward, sensitive, talented, and understandably innocent. Their characters are in direct opposition in the beginning, but over the course of the story, each character learns from the other, and the common ground they find fosters the self-love and understanding both were missing. It’s not a romance, but it is a love story, in which true friendship holds the key to self-acceptance. Highly recommended.
-
0 Replies
Sorry, there were no replies found.
Log in to reply.