The one movie Jennifer Lawrence would watch forever: “No matter when it’s on”
For a time, Jennifer Lawrence was the biggest actor in the world. While this pinnacle of her career may be in the past, with the peak of The Hunger Games franchise, she is today long secured in her unshakable A-lister status.
A huge appeal of Lawrence’s megastardom was her nonchalant demeanour outside the realm of fiction, but her filmography easily proved she could trapeze across the spectrum of drama and comedy, and land at the perfect point between the two. Jennifer Lawrence is a comedy icon, make no mistake, even in The Hunger Games, Katniss’s awkward and blunt comportment is played for laughs, admittedly an indicator that the dystopian movies were more concerned with being appealing than making the strongest social commentary.
But Lawrence still won her Oscar for ‘Best Lead Actress’ and cemented herself in prestige Hollywood history for 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, a dark comedy where she plays Tiffany, a depressed and brash widow who weilds dark humour against her counterpart Pat (Bradley Cooper), when they both, on a deeper level, are seeking unconventional love and healing. Her high-profile roles also include Rosalyn Rosenfeld in the notoriously hated, almost feral crime drama American Hustle, and much more recently, Maddie Parker in the goofy age-gap rom-com No Hard Feelings.
Lawrence seesaws between lighthearted and dark, high and low-brow. The elitists might be put off by her presenting herself as “uneducated,” but they can’t deny that she has earned her place among them. She is also exactly the type of industry pro who is responsible for a film like Superbad being voted the 100th best movie of the 21st century.
This is anecdotal; from what I can tell, Lawrence did not participate in The New York Times’s recent poll. But in 2013, the year that Catching Fire, widely regarded as the best Hunger Games movie, would hit theatres, Lawrence revealed a few of her favourite movies in an interview with Vanity Fair, characteristically noting, “Yeah, but they’re not artistic movies.”
“Things like Dumb and Dumber. Planes, Trains and Automobiles. That’s a great movie, I won’t make excuses for that one,” said Lawrence. “There’s Something About Mary. I just watched that for the 50th time. Bridget Jones’s Diary is the one that, no matter when it’s on, I will watch it. Anytime.”
Very unironically, these movies are legendary in the entertainment industry. Famously starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, Dumb and Dumber remains a seminal and well-liked road-trip comedy. Bridget Jones’s Diary is also a cultural touchstone, and its most recent sequel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, came out only this year and received considerable acclaim.
It’s difficult to connect these movies to Lawrence’s performances in the likes of The Hunger Games, X-Men, Winter’s Bone, House at the End of the Street, Mother, Don’t Look Up, and so on. I can’t say that any of the titles she would likely rewatch every single time play into my wheelhouse. But obviously, to Lawrence and a lot of other people, they are cherished time capsules.
Lawrence may be about to get her first Oscar nomination since 2015’s Joy for her reportedly amazing performance in dark comedy thriller Die, My Love. She will also star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s next movie. There was a time when I firmly believed that the Hunger Games star would go on to get as many Oscar nods as Meryl Streep, and it is her astounding fluidity in tastes and performance that could make that idea a reality yet.
