In ‘No Hard Feelings,’ a comedy made for Jennifer Lawrence

LAS VEGAS

Jennifer Lawrence has wanted to do a big comedy for years. She has always been funny and vibrant in her television appearances. And while she has brought humor and physical comedy to many of her roles for David O. Russell and others, she also hasn’t exactly gotten the big, broad “Dumb and Dumber" or “Anchorman” experience, to cite some of her favorites (or at least the ones she's memorized).

That changes this summer with “ No Hard Feelings ” (in theaters June 23), a classic, raunchy R-rated comedy that was tailor made for her.

“I’ve always wanted to do a comedy. And I’ve read a lot of them,” Lawrence told The Associated Press last week in Las Vegas. “I just didn’t read anything that was funny enough.”

“No Hard Feelings” was inspired by a real Craigslist ad posted by parents who were seeking a woman to “date” their son to bring him out of his shell the summer before he went to college. There are debates over just how real the “real ad" was, but thinking about the woman who might answer an ad like that was a premise funny enough to catch the attention of several producers and writer-director Gene Stupnitsky.

“The reason I wrote this movie for her is because I knew how funny she was and I wanted everyone else to know. I mean, people know she’s funny but they wanted her in a comedy. I thought, yes I know how to do this. I know how to write her voice,” Stupnitsky said. "I remember I told her, ‘I really want you to experience a feeling of sitting in a theater with hundreds of people laughing.’ She’s had many, many experiences in film, but she hasn’t quite had this one.”

In "No Hard Feelings," Lawrence’s character Maddie is having a rough stretch with money. As an Uber driver without a car she’s in a pressing bind. So when she finds this ad with the promise of a Buick Regal as payment, she takes the bait. In a clip that Sony debuted for theater owners at the CinemaCon convention last week, Maddie meets 19-year-old Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) for the first time wearing a slim, hot pink mini dress and high heels and acting overtly flirty and available.

As a producer on the film, Lawrence has already gotten to watch it with an audience and experience that big, communal laughter that Stupnitsky promised.

“I went to a test screening and sat in back,” she said. “It was pretty extraordinary.”

“I think audiences are really going to remember why they love her,”Stupnitsky said.