Rating: R | Runtime: 93 minutes
Release Date: May 26th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Nicole Holofcener
Writer(s): Nicole Holofcener

You know nice is not a nice word.

What happens when people decide white lies and supportively empty praise are akin to betrayal except when coming from them? That appears to be the question writer/director Nicole Holofcener presented herself upon writing the very funny You Hurt My Feelings. Because while the main example of “disloyalty” stems from Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) accidentally overhearing her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) say he didn’t enjoy her new book despite telling her how great it was through multiple drafts, it isn’t the only one.

These types of situations pervade existence. Beth and Don tell their son Eliot (Owen Teague) he’s amazing regardless of anything he’s actually accomplished outside of that role. Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) admits she lies to her husband Mark (Arian Moayed) after poor performances because she genuinely believes he’s a great actor. Don keeps his mouth shut when seeing patients in hopes they discover how to heal themselves and they smile back before muttering how useless he is as a psychiatrist.

Holofcener delivers countless such examples throughout the script not as a means of exposing Beth to her own hypocrisy, but to portray just how common and necessary these interactions are. Case and point: Beth and Sarah’s mother Georgia (Jeannie Berlin). Here’s a woman with no filter or time to coddle. And they hate it. They label her honesty as crazy. Her inability to feign interest in the uninteresting as rude. Why? Because we are a species of people-pleasers and insecure babies.

We tell ourselves that we can handle the truth and then spiral out of control when we actually confront it. It’s easier to simply deflect and distract than it is to face facts that ultimately don’t matter in the long run because we simply don’t have the time or energy to traverse the minefield of emotions and assumptions inevitably unleashed when we try. Who cares if Don thinks Beth’s book isn’t good? He’s not a writer. He’s not a critic. Who cares if he thinks it is good? Beth does.

Frustrations run amok as a result due to the scenarios that demand fibs growing in number across multiple levels. Some are a product of love. Some professional responsibility. Some nothing more than plain convenience. And whether it’s Beth or Eliot or Don’s patients (the inspired casting of real-life couple Amber Tamblyn and David Cross or the always dryly combative Zach Cherry), choosing the lie becomes the default because everyone is too tired to process the potential consequences of a generally consequence-less crime.

Except, of course, when you’re in a movie whose entire purpose is to expose those consequences. Then it becomes a crucial point of thinking—especially for those trying to find their way out of the unavoidable guilt of knowing their attempt to placate and inspire might have conversely harmed their target instead. The film can therefore feel a bit too perfect in its cause and effect (Teague is often used as a narrative device more than as a human being), but the comedy sells itself.

The same can be said about the multiple ending points thanks to so much focus being put on Don’s so-called betrayal. As soon as Beth’s unjustifiably harsh reaction to her justifiably hurt feelings is finally hashed out, you feel as if the whole should be over. But that’s just the first of many stages of epilogue-fueled clarity since Sarah, Mark, Don’s patients, and everyone else also had their own flirtations with the unspoken rules of a society falling apart.

The humor born from the different situations are worth the constant fade-to-black fake outs even if each new character-specific conclusion feels cutely sanitized in the process. Keeping a little mess involved isn’t always a bad thing and I do believe You Hurt My Feelings could have benefited from more. I get the desire to finish on more satisfying notes since the script is mostly bickering and name-calling beforehand, though. And, as long as it remains funny, who am I to fault the decision?

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(L-R) Tobias Menzies, Julia Louis-Dreyfus in YOU HURT MY FEELINGS; courtesy of A24. Credit: Jeong Park.