Since critics raved about Jennifer Lawrence as the protective older sister in Debra Granik’s 2010 Ozark Mountain-set “Winter’s Bone,” it is has been gratifying following her arc. She was in an “X-Men” film a year later (and several others since) and then played Katniss Everdeen in those dreadful “Hunger Games” movies. But Lawrence also picked up an Academy Award for David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012) and was nominated for another one in Russell’s “American Hustle” (2013). She stumbled somewhat in the deeply flawed sci-fi effort “Passengers” (22016) opposite Chris Pratt and in Darren Aronofsky’s over-the-top “Mother!” (2017) (she and auteur Aronofsky were a couple for a hot minute). Since then, she has appeared in Adam McKay’s important, if not very good “Don’t Look Up” (2021) and Lila Neugebauer’s heartfelt, war-veterans drama “Causeway” (2022).

Now, she plays hard luck Maddie Barker in Kiev-born director Gene Stupnitsky’s “No Hard Feelings” (a title I find hard to remember). The film is a raucous screwball comedy throwback with an angle designed to appeal to adolescent males. It has more than a few connections to such 1980s-era, older-woman sex comedies as “Weird Science” (and costars 1980s leading man Matthew Broderick as the hero’s father). This may also explain the film’s geriatric rock-and-roll soundtrack.

First, the film introduces us to Maddie, a sexually active single woman in her early 30s, who lives alone in her late mother’s small house in Montauk, Long Island, where the locals are being driven out by gentrification. Maddie gets by as an Uber driver and a bartender at a seaside watering hole where the rich customers can be rude and demanding. But Maddie has fallen on hard times. She owes back taxes on the property. He car is being confiscated by an ex-boyfriend/tow-truck driver she has ghosted named Gary (a quite good Ebon Moss-Bachrach of Amherst). Maddie answers an ad placed by the wealthy mother (the delightful Laura Bananti) and father of Percy Becker (a way too wimpy Andrew Barth Feldman), a geeky shut-in, who volunteers at a local veterinarian hospital, has no friends and is about to go to Princeton. Percy’s “helicopter parents” want Maddie to befriend and seduce their son in order to get him to “come out of his shell.” In exchange, they will give Maddie, who has been reduced to getting around town on her old roller-blades (talk about the ’80s) a perfectly preserved Buick sedan.

Maddie arrives at the animal shelter and asks to meet the shelter’s most damaged resident. Percy, who is obviously that creature, introduces Maddie to Milo, a black German shepherd that used to work for the DEA and that goes nuts when it hears the word, “cocaine.” More on that later.

Maddie has two best friends and luckily for her (and the movie), one of them is Sara, the classic sidekick and played by Natalie Morales (“Language Lessons”). Sara is heavily pregnant and planning to leave Montauk because she and her husband (Scott MacArthur) can’t afford to live there, either.

Film buffs might notice that Lawrence has been watching Marilyn Monroe comedies. Like Monroe, Lawrence knows how to use the “male gaze” to her advantage. At a local bar, another former lover, a football player (Quincy Dunn-Baker), menaces her “new boyfriend.” Maddie tries giving Percy a lap dance. Gollum-sized Percy gets a rash. Maddie, who has daddy issues, comically beats up three people trying to steal her clothes on the beach. Daryl Hall and John Oates get too much airplay. Kyle Mooney is fun as Percy’s former nanny. A woman Percy’s age calls Maddie, “Ma’am.” “No Hard Feelings” is enjoyable enough to overlook its issues. But Lawrence’s Maddie is both the film’s beauty and its beast, and she and Lawrence are something to behold.

(“No Hard Feelings: contains nudity, sexually suggestive dialogue, violence and profanity)

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.