It is a truth universally acknowledged that a streaming service, in possession of a vast fortune, must churn out a large number of sub-par, formulaic, cringe-worthy romcoms in the run-up to Christmas. The streaming service we\u2019re referring to is, of course, Netflix<\/a> \u2013 the platform we can always rely on to show up in November, armed with a tray of half-baked holiday movies.<\/p>\n From Holidate and the Knight Before Christmas, to the Princess Switch series and anything else starring Vanessa Hudgens, the streamer has always delivered when releasing their annual slate of sickly-sweet festive flicks and this year is no exception with Love Hard<\/a> \u2013 a Christmas romcom starring Nina Dobrev and Jimmy O. Yang \u2013 kicking off the 2021 holiday season.<\/p>\n The plot is as follows: Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev is Natalie, an LA-based journalist best known for her disastrous dating column, who stumbles across the seemingly-perfect Josh on a dating app (Darren Barnet). After a month of long phone calls, meaningful conversations and constant texting, Natalie decides to travel to his Lake Placid hometown and surprise Josh for Christmas \u2013 but turns up at his house to find that she\u2019s been cat-fished.<\/p>\n Josh (Jimmy O. Yang) is actually a glasses-wearing shop assistant living in his parents\u2019 basement who\u2019d been masquerading as his former best friend Tag (Barnet). While initially horrified, Natalie strikes a deal with Josh: she\u2019ll pretend to be Josh\u2019s girlfriend for the holiday season if he uses his inside knowledge of Tag\u2019s interests to help set them up.<\/p>\n It will come as no surprise to anyone who\u2019s just read this synopsis that Love Hard is a flawed film, even for a romcom \u2013 a genre of film that typically requires some suspension of belief at the best of times. Not only is the premise, where a woman slowly falls in love with a dating app identity fraudster,\u00a0ripped straight from the pages of a catfish\u2019s fan-fiction, but there are just too many plot details that are distractingly improbable.<\/p>\n In the digital age we\u2019re living in, it\u2019s hard to believe Natalie wouldn\u2019t have tried to FaceTime Josh over the month they\u2019d spent texting and speaking on the phone, and as for her turning up at his house to surprise him \u2013 how did she find out where Josh lived? I don\u2019t know a huge amount about cat-fishing, but giving your actual address to the person you\u2019re trying to dupe seems like a big no-no.<\/p>\n Arguably the most unbelievable element of Love Hard is the fact that Natalie doesn\u2019t run for the hills as soon as she discovers Josh isn\u2019t the person she thought he was. While she\u2019s not exactly happy about being romantically conned, she doesn\u2019t seem particularly concerned, worried or scared about the fact that she\u2019s given four weeks of her life to a man she probably knows nothing about and is far too willing to spend Christmas sleeping in the same room as him.<\/p>\n Despite Love Hard\u2019s problematic plot points, Dobrev and Yang\u2019s romantic chemistry is one of the few highlights of the film, with Yang delivering a performance so subtly charming that you soon start to feel quite fond of the objectively creepy Josh. However, the pair aren\u2019t helped by the script\u2019s heavy mix of romcom and Christmas film cliches that are so shoe-horned, it\u2019s as if the screenwriters simply copied and pasted elements of the script from a host of different early noughties chick-flicks.<\/p>\n From Nina Dobrev playing a writer who\u2019s unlucky in love (those raised on a steady diet of romcoms such as myself will have been lulled into thinking there are countless vacancies for journalism jobs), to the cliche of two adversaries slowly falling in love after making a mutually beneficial deal\/bet\/wager (see: 10 Things I Hate About You, How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Proposal, Two Weeks Notice, and most of Sandra Bullock\u2019s work), Love Hard ticks almost all of the boxes on your romcom bingo card. There\u2019s even a moment where Natalie recreates the Love Actually cards scene \u2013 which is arguably the creepiest scene in the whole film.<\/p> Love Hard isn\u2019t completely terrible though. There are a few chuckle-worthy lines of dialogue, especially when the film tries to satirise digital dating culture (in one scene, Natalie\u2019s quick-witted, article-hungry boss \u2013 played by Matty Finochio \u2013 teases her: \u201cWhat about the guy who kept calling your relationship a collab?\u201d) and if it\u2019s a slightly trashy, candy cane-filled romcom you\u2019re after, then that\u2019s exactly what you\u2019re getting with this film.<\/p>\n Those looking for the next critically acclaimed romantic comedy hit that\u2019s set to become an annual Christmas watch will probably find Love Hard hard to love, but just like the rest of Netflix\u2019s collection of cringe-worthy festive efforts, this good-intentioned film will undoubtedly find its audience as we dive head-first into the holiday season.<\/p>\n Love Hard arrives on Netflix on Friday 5th November. <\/strong>Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the\u00a0best series on Netflix<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0best movies on Netflix<\/a>, or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Lauren Morris Published: Friday, 05 November 2021 at 12:00 am 2.0 out of 5 star rating It is a truth universally acknowledged that a streaming service, in possession of a vast fortune, must churn out a large number of sub-par, formulaic, cringe-worthy romcoms in the run-up to Christmas. The streaming service we\u2019re referring to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":6780,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche.jpg",452,303,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche-300x201.jpg",300,201,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche.jpg",452,303,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche.jpg",452,303,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche.jpg",452,303,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/11\/love-hard-review-catfish-romcom-delivers-a-sleigh-full-of-cringe-and-festive-cliche.jpg",452,303,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Lauren Morris Published: Friday, 05 November 2021 at 12:00 am 2.0 out of 5 star rating It is a truth universally acknowledged that a streaming service, in possession of a vast fortune, must churn out a large number of sub-par, formulaic, cringe-worthy romcoms in the run-up to Christmas. The streaming service we\u2019re referring to…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/6779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Nina\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2021\/11\/LH_20201113_Unit_11035r-5416c29.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"love-hard-netflix-review\"\\"\/")
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