Jennifer Lawrence has had a complicated career since her first Oscar Nomination for her 2010 performance in “Winter’s Bone,” in which she played a back country girl with “guts.” I thought she was wonderful.

Then pow, there she was with her Best Actress Oscar for “Silver Linings Playbook,” where my passion and admiration for her grew brighter as she chased star Bradley Cooper who ran down the street wearing a garbage bag to get him to dance with her in a contest.

We were all hooked and willing to follow her down the street to Star Land.

That’s the way the grass and reputation grows on La La Land’s hard streets.

It’s been a rocky road with up and downs for her just like Bette Davis and Liz Taylor and every gifted actor.

So here’s our favorite lady as “Maddie” in what, at first glance, is just another sex-laced, R-rated, “put the kiddies to bed early” sitcom, put together by Director Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillips.

Here we bump into Matthew Broderick, of all people, and Laura Benanti as the parents of a nerdish son (a wonderful Andrew Barth Feldman) who’s heading to Princeton in the fall with a high IQ, a hidden musical gift, no bad habits and shy eyes.

The plot? It’s a colorful one cast in an improbable cartoon. Dance through it with your tongue deep in your cheek, because the cast from the still amazing Lawrence to the now aging Broderick and young Feldman have surprises in store for you.

Mom and Dad, in pure sitcom land, want to have their son dip his toe in a one-time sex night with a girl before he goes to Princeton, so they put an ad online offering a Buick Regal and cash to a “nice” girl who will make the boy “a man” before college.

Maddie, 35, looking here like a late 20s chick, lives in her mom’s house, in semi posh Long Island’s Montauk. She is about to lose the house to growing property taxes. She applies for and wins the job and the promised Buick so she can continue her job as a Uber driver.

Boy meets girl with a script full of unlikely consequences and TV laughs, which happily won this reviewer over. Sue me, but Lawrence is still full of the same magical talent so I crossed my fingers and hoped she wouldn’t walk through it.

Still the gifted actor with the “moves” she came with, she starts with the writers sex and sass, resurrects her own moves, and bluffs her way to the Buick and cash.

When it seems like Lawrence and Feldman, a young Broadway star with big screen gifts, are about to run out of gas, she strikes a hidden gift match and lights a fuse that wins us over.

“No Hard Feelings” is only a foot or two over your average sex and boobs sitcom, but the gifts that Lawrence came to us with in “Silver Linings Playbook” and her ferocious performance in “American Hustle” burst out.

When a desperate scene in a nightclub is failing, she makes the young Feldman sit at a piano where he breaks hearts with Daryl Hall and John Oates “Maneater.” A long closeup of her eyes, shows us that we’re watching a major star on her way back up to the top.

“No Hard Feelings” may be junk, but even a junk pile can sprout flowers.

The last song in “No Hard Feelings” is “You’ll Accomp’ny Me” by the legendary classic rock group Bob Seger. If that doesn’t do it, nothing will.

“No Hard Feelings” can be streamed on Netflix.

 

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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