I'm not one to take to romantic comedies because of the fact that most of them are blatantly obvious as far as the plot is concerned. They all tend to end up the same way and are devoid of any sort of realistic scenario emotion. I watched this one only because it was featured on my Plex server and I had no other plans. In the end I was pretty surprised how much I enjoyed it and was particularly impressed with how well Lawrence is keeping her acting chops alive and how well she is maintaining her seemingly endless youth.
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At 32 years of age, Maddie Baker is having some serious financial issues. We are introduced to this in the opening sequence where her car is being towed away as financial collateral because she hasn't paid her real-estate taxes on her house in a while where she lives in Montauk, New York. Now I have heard stories about Montauk and how it is admired by lots of people in New York State and City. Like many seasonal beach areas the locals have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the tourists that show up every year and Maddie Baker (Lawrence) is one of them. She has always lived there and over the years she has seen the prices of everything go sky high as the city-slicker sun-worshippers come out to their 2nd houses for a couple of months a year.
She is in a bad situation here because in order to just make ends meet she had been an Uber driver during the high season just to get by. Without her car, she is well and truly screwed and is now facing the danger that the government will soon take her house due to non-payment of taxes. On a side note, I think that this is absolutely terrible that this is a very real situation for a lot of Americans. Just because you own your house outright doesn't mean that they can't come by and take it off of you and make you homeless. Nah... you gotta pay the piper until the end of time... and we wonder why people are increasingly starting to hate the government.
Anyway, she confides with her friends at the restaurant that she bartends in and someone finds a crazy listing on Craigslist about a family that is looking for someone to date their socially awkward son. This family is extremely wealthy and is offering a car for any girl in their early 20's who will "date" their son and make it look like they weren't involved in the transaction.
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By "date" the parents in the Craigslist article mean "have sex with" and they make that very clear when she comes by for an interview with them. They question her age and she convinces them that someone with level of experience might actually be better suited for the job than someone who is young, inexperienced, and an idiot. She has a good point there but this was when we start to realize that Jennifer Lawrence actually is in her 30's and I gotta say "wow." I never really looked at her as being extremely sexy, but she definitely pulls it off in this.
When she approaches the rich family's son at his volunteer job at an animal shelter, she is really flirting with him hard but he is completely oblivious to her advances and once he realizes what is going on he tries to make her stop as he is clearly made uncomfortable by all of this. He is a 19 year old who is quite different from how I would imagine that most 19 year old's would behave in that he seems to be actively avoiding getting her out of her clothes. This is clearly a situation that Maddie Baker is not terribly familiar with and well, as predicted, she starts to enjoy the way that the much younger boy named Percy wishes to actually DATE her, rather than jumping straight into the sack.
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When Percy insists on taking her on actual dates and then goes and does fun things with her and starts to show genuine emotion towards her she is a bit torn about the situation. She still wants to sleep with him so she can get the car, but at the same time she starts to feel some level of remorse because he is a genuinely good person and as it turns out, a kind of guy that would make for an excellent boyfriend for someone. He is the opposite of every other kind of guy that she has dated as she has mostly done one-night drunken stands or relationships that were self-destructive and overly sexual.
Even if you haven't seen this film or have no intention of doing so. There is something that will probably surprise you as much as it did me when it happens. While attempting to get Percy naked in the ocean some teenagers come by and steal their clothes. She exits the water fully naked and gets into a fist fight with all 3 of them exposing her entire body in the process.
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I've intentionally not featured any stills from that fight because I like this blog to be as "non porn" as possible but just trust me when I say that you are going to be surprised when you see it. Apparently, Lawrence was offered and refused a body double for all the scenes and it took quite a few takes to get it right so I guess we can say that she is a true professional to keep her composure for the entirety of a naked fight scene outdoors.
I want to make it very clear that I am not recommending this movie so that someone can perve over Jennifer Lawrence being naked. She is attractive, yes. But this is not the reason why I think this movie is pretty decent for a RomCom. We all have the internet and if we want to see boobs we can do so very quickly. This film is good because it is touching and for me at least, I quite enjoyed seeing that there are more than one type of person in this world (or at least in the fiction that is this film.) Not every guy is going to be interested in jumping straight to sex with a girl, even if she is hot and a lot of the comedy is presented to us in Maddie's frustration that this kid doesn't seem to be very interested in sleeping with her at all and is much more interested in romance - which is something that she is completely unaccustomed to.
Should I watch it?
It should be evident by now that I think you should, even if you are not a fan of RomCom's like me. I found it funny and I didn't look at my phone the entire time it was on - which in my world is always a good sign that something is entertaining. It might not turn out the way you think either, which is very unusual for a romantic comedy. This R-Rated movie has a ton of sexual innuendo as well as a bunch of nudity, so maybe keep the kids away while you are watching it. I liked it and think that others will as well. This is a vast departure from what we would expect from and actress that has won an Oscar as well and I admire the hell out of Jennifer Lawrence for doing it in the first place.
