The death of the sex comedy

After a few years in which she has been largely absent from cinemas – her appearance in Netflix’s climate-change black comedy Don’t Look Up aside – Jennifer Lawrence is returning with, of all things, a raunchy sex comedy, with the punning title No Hard Feelings. It has earned an R-rating in the US and 15 in the UK, and judging by its marketing materials, it is a 21st-century spin on Tom Cruise’s star-making role in Risky Business, focusing on an older woman (yes, Lawrence, at 32, is now classed as such by Hollywood) who is hired by a family via Craigslist to ‘date’ their socially awkward...