I’ll date his brains out. Montauk, New York. 32-year-old Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence) is an Uber driver and bartender at a seafood joint. As she owes property taxes on the childhood home she inherited from her late mother, her car is repossessed and she faces bankruptcy. Her ex Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) turns up to tow her car for non-payment of unaffordable property taxes and she sees it parked as she rollerskates to work and gets arrested attempting to steal it. Her surfing lawyer Gabe Sawyer (Zahn McClarnon) bails her out at court and warns her to stay out of trouble. Desperate to keep the home, a piece of real estate so valuable old classmate Doug Khan (Hasan Mihaj) tries to get her to give him the sale. She reminds him of his scandalous sex history with a teacher. Her friends Sara (Natalie Morales) and Jim (Scott MacArthur) are pregnant and hard up and thinking of moving to Florida. Sara points out a weird posting on Craigslist and Maddie feels forced to consider it even though she’s not a prositute. Wealthy couple Alison (Laura Benanti) and Laird Becker (Matthew Broderick) ask her to date their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) in exchange for a Buick Regal. Since Percy is shy and has had no experiences with girls, drinking, parties, or sex, his parents hope to boost his confidence before he attends Princeton otherwise he will be hopelessly out of his depth. Maddie attempts to seduce Percy at the animal shelter where he volunteers and she pretends to be interested in adopting a dog but when she offers him a ride home, he thinks that she is attempting to kidnap him and pepper sprays her. Despite this, they agree to go on a real date the following day. Maddie and Percy meet at a bar the next night where one of her exes spills the dirt on her and Maddie introduces Percy to alcohol. Then they go skinny dipping at the beach. While they are in the water, a group of drunken teenagers steal their clothes. Maddie fights them in the nude, frightening Percy, who refuses to have sex with her. When she tries to leave without him, he jumps on her car naked and they outrun the local police. She and Percy try to have sex back at her house but he develops an anxiety rash so Maddie takes care of him. Maddie and Percy continue to date, sharing more about themselves and forming a friendship. He arranges to meet his former nanny but it turns out to be a manny named Jody (Kyle Mooney) and he’s jealous of Maddie because he wants to have sex with Percy too. Maddie and Percy confide in each other that they never went to prom. Maddie never went because her father didn’t respond to her requests to get to know him and that morning a letter arrived marked Return to Sender. He was a guy from the city where he lived with his real family and paid off her mother and ignored Maddie altogether. So they imitate a prom night, going to a fancy dinner where Percy plays the piano – he learned Maneater especially for Maddie. Percy meets an acquaintance from school, Natalie (Amalia Yoo) who’s going to Princeton too and she invites him to a party that night. After he and Maddie disagree about their long-term plans, he goes to the party while Maddie searches for him. She finds him with Natalie in bed, though nothing happened between them, after he took a painkiller with alcohol. After he and Maddie are asked to leave the party Percy confesses his love for Maddie. The next day, Percy tells his parents he wants to stay in Montauk with Maddie instead of going to Princeton … Need a car? Date our son. A return to mainstream non-superhero films for Academy Award-winner and newly married wife and mother Lawrence sees her in this Eighties/ Oughties sex comedy with the bonus of full-frontal nudity – hers. As the older woman educating a diffident younger man she has fun in this breezy if frank romp, high on the star’s charms in a screenplay co-written by director Gene Stupnitsky & John Phillips and apparently derived from a real world ad found by the film’s producers. It’s a well-worn story of a sentimental education but told knowingly, referencing everything from The Graduate to The Affair. In a script riddled with ribaldry and lewdness there are lots of good throwaway lines here – such as when Maddie and Sara inform Jim about the different kinds of one night stand a girl can have and when Percy has to have a talk with his parents while he acts as ‘the parents.’ His persistent abstinence is the perfect comic foil to Maddie’s sex drive. However as clever and funny as it is, the mystery persists as to why an A-list actress and producer would do full frontal nudity as Lawrence does here – albeit in an action scene after an open water coitus interruptus that Percy says reminds him of the beginning of Jaws. In the end it all revolves around property – location, pricing, ownership and the hold it has on people. That this ends on a road trip diffuses the issues of identity, class and money that this story is really about. It’s as if Benjamin drove off with Mrs Robinson, which is what should have happened. Isn’t it? Watch out for Achilles-Andreas of Greece (ie almost royalty, not since 1973, natch) in the small role of ‘Teen,’ These people use us so why don’t we use them?
mondomovies 