Jennifer Lawrence has no hard feelings over offending audiences.
The Oscar winner and “No Hard Feelings” actress-producer told Sky News that the hallmark of a great comedy film is making viewers uncomfortable.
“I think it’s time for a good old-fashioned laugh,” Lawrence said, “and it really is hard to make a comedy where you’re not offending people. Everybody in some sense will be offended by this film — you’re welcome.”
The “Silver Linings Playbook” actress continued, “Something we learned from the old-time comedies is mean comedy is not really funny, making somebody feel bad about themselves – other than me making fun of me. But the way that we did it is fine, we figured it out.”
Lawrence’s “No Hard Feelings” co-star Andrew Barth Feldman echoed her sentiments about the Gene Stupnitsky-helmed film that follows a failed Uber driver (Lawrence) in her quest to get a new car…by having sex with a 19-year-old Princeton-bound teen (Feldman).
“We need to be able to engage with being offended,” Feldman said. “There was and is like a big overcorrect because we realized there were so many things that we were joking about that we shouldn’t be. I think this movie does a really good job of continuing to push limits while still engaging with the conversation that the things that these people are doing are wrong and not a good idea.”
The current debate over the state of comedy films in Hollywood also had Melissa McCarthy weigh in.
“Somehow the new logline is that comedies don’t work,” the “Bridesmaids” star recently said. “I think bad comedies, I think bad movies don’t work but I will fight to my last breath, which will be in about 4 more wings, that comedies are important and I think it brings people together.”
She continued, “I don’t know why, because we’ve never needed to laugh more. Comedy allows you to sit next to somebody whose ideas don’t match up. And maybe you come out a little closer.”
