Love Hard is a romantic comedy movie directed by Hernán Jiménez and stars Nina Dobrev, Jimmy O. Yang, and Darren Barnet. It is currently streaming on Netflix with a run time of 1 hour 46 minutes with audio in English.
Netflix describes Love Hard as:
“After meeting her perfect match on a dating app, an LA writer learns she’s been catfished when she flies 3,000 miles to surprise him for Christmas”.
– Love Hard review does not contain spoilers –
Love Hard revolves around the story of a young girl who falls prey to the artificial world of online dating app and ends up getting catfished. What seems a 100% match for her is someone different altogether turns her world upside down on a Christmas eve. Online dating apps are a complete disaster most of the time as people hide their looks and identity to lure the opposite sex. But this betrayal doesn’t take a lawful offence in Love Hard and gives birth to an adorable love story.
Love Hard tells the reality of online dating apps while smashing the image of good-looking and attractive individuals by emphasizing a beautiful heart rather than personality. It tells us to look beyond one’s features and admire a person with average looks too as they are beautiful in their own way. The superficial concept of love is also spoken about when people switch to the dream world of online dating sites by refusing to find one near to them.
The protagonist gets to see all kinds of men ranging from married to creepy ones on an app called Flirt Alert. In order to write a noteworthy piece on love in a lifestyle column, she jumps on the idea to explore dating apps and find her soulmate from all over the world. Natalie Bauer comes across a really handsome guy named Josh Lin and ends up getting matched with him.
Seeing the reality of her true match turns her heartbroken but shamelessly joins hands with her nerdy date in getting involved with her dream boy. The concept of nerd guys is also highlighted to always fail at achieving love when it comes to attractive girls, getting bullied, and being a disappointment to the parents. Love Hard is an attempt at usual romantic comedy where the female lead falls for an attractive male lead by ignoring the geeky hero, but eventually falls for him due to his good heart and caring nature. The two individuals finally find their perfect soulmates in an imperfect way and accept each other’s flaws.
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Summing up: Love Hard
Overall Love Hard is a perfect amalgamation of comedy, romance, dialogues, and music. The festival of Christmas that includes cultural gatherings and a fun celebration is beautifully merged with finding unfiltered and pure love. The majority of the portions appear cliché and not logical in terms of trusting a person so much blindly by his looks that you do not try to video call him but rather end up outside his house.
Jimmy O. Yang as Josh Lin, a shy and geeky boy with low confidence, has done justice to his character and fulfils the adorable vibe check. Nina Dobrev as Natalie Bauer seems clumsy at times but tries hard to stand out. The rom-com has made a good attempt at showing the true face of online dating apps and that one needs to be careful in taking such hasty decisions. The movie majorly highlights the concept of “looks can be deceptive”.
Love Hard is streaming now on Netflix.
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