MARK JUDGE: From Saturday Night Fever to No Hard Feelings, how the American male in movies became impotent.

Films like Saturday Night Fever and No Hard Feelings dive into the energy of the lover archetype, yet both are representative of their times — in the case of No Hard Feelings, sadly so. In the archetype Moore and Gillette celebrate, the lover is expansive and poetical. “Nothing is out of bounds for him.” Men in 2023 are boxed in by overprotective parents, the addiction to pornography, and humorless women made brittle by feminism. Today it’s difficult to avoid the negative side of the lover archetype, the “addicted lover,” who is obsessively stopping every 3 feet to smell the roses to the point where the rest of life is ignored.

When Percy does finally have a sexual encounter with Maddie — well sort of — it has none of the spiritual power and grace of the dance scene in Saturday Night Live. It’s crude, off-screen, and over quickly. Percy can barely hold a joystick, much less dominate a dance floor. From Tony and Stephanie in the 70s to Percy and Maddie in 2023, it’s been a long and painful devolution.

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