'Love Hard' Review: Nina Dobrev starrer Netflix romcom is old wine in a new bottle
The holiday season is just around the corner and Netflix is all geared up for it. Like peanut butter and jelly sandwich, holiday season and romcoms are an eternal crowd-pleaser. The streaming giant kicked off the festivities with Nina Dobrev starrer holiday-themed rom-com titled 'Love Hard'.
Directed by Hernan Jimenez, 'Love Hard' chronicles a Los Angeles-based journalist- Natalie Bauer's (Nina Dobrev) attempts to find love. Online dating is hard, and no one knows it better than Natalie whose stint on a dating app called Flirt Alert App resulted in a string of disastrous dates which involved cheating spouses to ghosting. Just like Adele, Natalie decided to turn her sorrow into treasured gold as a columnist on a popular lifestyle website. Under the highly uninspired pseudonym of Always a Bridesmaid, Natalie documents all her disastrous dating stories for the world to relish upon. But everything turns upside down when Natalie matches with a dreamboat named Josh Lin (Jimmy O. Yang) from East Coast on the app. The duo instantly hit it off. Natalie decides to fly down to Lake Placid, New York, to surprise her new boyfriend. Instead of surprising Josh, Natalie gets surprised when she realizes that she has been catfished.
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Natalie realizes that Josh was using his best-friend Tag's (Darren Barnet) pictures on the dating app. The real Josh- a short and bespectacled introvert, who lives in his parents' basement and enjoys making candles, tries to pacify Natalie. Just like any reasonable person in her place, a shocked Natalie decides to go back home and abandon her quest of finding love. But just then she ends up crossing paths with the real Tag and is now determined to win his affection. Josh swoops in and offers to help set Natalie up with his best friend on one condition- she should stay back for a week and pretend to be his girlfriend.
Natalie unwittingly agrees to Josh's offer and begins her very own catfishing attempts to win over Tag. From pretending to like the books that Tag loves to faking an interest in outdoor activities, Natalie does everything within her power to lure Tag. While Natalie's storyline goes off the rails with her increasingly dishonest moments, Josh's character manages to win us over with his heartwarming backstory. During a conversation with Natalie Josh explains how he never set out to catfish her but was forced into doing it after getting no matches on the dating app with his real photos. So as a social experiment he used his conventionally attractive best friend's pictures and within minutes managed to get a whopping 80 matches! Josh's relationship with his overtly-competitive older brother, and the strong bond with his family, just makes his character more endearing and relatable.
There's nothing groundbreaking or innovative about the plotline of this movie. Just like in any other rom-com, after an extremely embarrassing and publicly-humiliating moment, Natalie. comes to the realization that she doesn't need to date a perfect man, but instead should date a man perfect for her and goes back to Josh. Although the story is extremely predictable, Dobrev, Yang, and Melton's acting is commendable. In fact, Melton managed to steal the show with his stellar performance. The Netflix flick isn't a total dud as there are a few heartwarming and funny moments peppered throughout the movie. If you're looking for a movie that comforts and soothes you with its familiarity and feel-good feeling, then 'Love Hard' should definitely be on your watchlist.
'Love Hard' is available for streaming on Netflix.