Netflix’s Love Hard is the mushy rom-com much needed to warm our insides this Christmas.
Rating: 3/5
Includes some spoilers. Read at your own peril
Christmas is the one time of the year British people can look past their genetic scepticism to enjoy the cheesiness, the wholesomeness, the sunshine (purely metaphorical of course) and gumdrops which is so congruous with this time of year. Netflix’s new holiday rom com Love Hard is an example of how, if you can look beyond the cheese, you might just find a decent feel-good film.
Released on 5 November, Love Hard tells the age-old tale of someone who is unlucky in the love department. Nina Dobrev returns to the screen to play journalist Natalie Bauer whose dating mishaps and woes become immortalised in her dating column. On the dating app ‘Flirt Alert’, Natalie ‘meets’ Josh who slowly proves himself to be her ideal man. It is only when she takes a spontaneous trip to surprise Josh for Christmas at his home in Lake Placid, New York does Natalie realise she has been catfished. The film becomes what I can only describe as online-dating-gone-wrong-meets-Christmas-on-steroids-meets-fake-dating.
Like many other rom coms that have come before it, Love Hard falls victim to overused stereotypes. You have the journalist (what is it with the main character being a writer in rom-coms?) who wants more from her job but is pigeon-holed into the same role; the best friend who only makes a cameo to provide advice or make a witty dig at the behest of the protagonist; and of course, God forbid, if the main character has a mum that’s alive, right? Love Hard offers more to the screen than just these clichés.
Mind blown. #LoveHard #lovehardnetflix pic.twitter.com/wwVGUUYQo4
— EGO OFFICIAL (@EGOOfficial__) November 14, 2021
The film starts off in sunny, trendy LA and quickly pokes fun at the various caricatures of the people from the city. I’m not from LA, quite far from there actually, but even I could realise that Natalie’s favourite drink, a “green Latifah with an extra shot of wheatgrass”, was a dig at the typical LA Instagram influencer who drinks a kale smoothie every morning before climbing on their peloton. This was further cemented when Natalie goes to talk to her boss who happens to have a desk that also doubles as an exercise bike – director Hernán Jiménez was not quite as subtle with that one.
Natalie’s disaster with online dating is quite realistic to the dating scene now. Whether you’re on Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, or Grindr, a lot of people can relate to going on a date with someone you met online and about two minutes in wanting to make a quick getaway because your date can’t go one sentence without referring to women as ‘females’. I think a lot more people can also relate to feeling like you have finally found your perfect fish in the sea only to realise the species of said fish is the worst kind of all – a catfish, which brings us to Josh.
There was a certain hesitation I felt when we were introduced to the real Josh played by the actor and comedian Jimmy O. Yang. Would the film skirt over the fact he catfished someone? Would they try and make the audience pity him despite his seedy behaviour? Safe to say, I did not have a good first impression of Josh when he called Natalie a psycho for travelling all this way to see him at Christmas instead of apologising for lying to her about his identity. Josh had a lot of work to do if he wanted to redeem himself which he did by the end of the film.
Following the wave of success from the Marvel film, Shang-Chi (read the review for Shang-Chi on Carrot) which brought to the big screens the first Asian superhero with a majority Asian cast, Love Hard also continues the Asian representation in its film. Although it is worth mentioning the lack of female Asian representation in this rom-com.
Before I watched the film, I saw some online criticism towards its representation of Asian men. Frankly, that criticism is what made me want to see it in the first place. Some people were bitter that the main Asian lead was not ‘conventionally attractive’, his character being emasculated, and the film did not portray enough ‘good-looking’ Asian men. To that, I have to say: “you should’ve gone to Specsavers”.
@an__nie what is this @Netflix 😩😭 #asian #asiantiktok <a
title=”netflix” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/netflix”>#netflix #lovehard #fypシ ♬ original sound – annie 🖤💚
Jimmy O. Yang, who is no less attractive than his co-stars, shows us a sensitive, vulnerable side to men that we do not see enough of in films in general, let alone in Asian men on-screen. Alongside Yang, we see Darren Barnett, Harry Shum Jr, and James Saito. The film presents us with attractive Asian male leads without fetishising them.
My biggest gripe with the representation of Asian people on screen is that the characters were wearing shoes inside the house, in an Asian household. But, other than that one unforgivable sin, I enjoyed that the Asian characters weren’t solely reduced to their ‘Asian-ness’. They were developed beyond that. Josh secretly loved making candles in his parents’ basement and felt overshadowed by his older brother who loved being the centre of attention, and their father was a family ‘macho’ man who ran an outdoor store called ‘All Things Outdoors’. I cannot leave out Grandma June who provided pearls of wisdom, my favourite being: “the pen is mightier than the penis.” Quite true if you have ever been turned off by the wrong use of “your” instead of “you’re”.
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It was quite heart-warming seeing Natalie and Josh’s relationship bloom over the film. Josh tries to redeem himself with Natalie by promising to hook her up with the person he was originally impersonating – Tag (Darren Barnett). While accompanying Natalie on her dates with Tag, and trying to help her become Tag’s ideal woman, Josh through many ways shows the audience that though he may have used Tag’s picture, the words, and many conversations he exchanged with Natalie were indeed his own.
One of my favourite scenes was when the terrified-of-heights Natalie goes rock-climbing with Tag who is an outdoor connoisseur. It is with Josh’s affectionate coaxing and gentle words as he gives Natalie his AirPods and plays the song that never fails to calm her down that she can quite literally face her fear. Josh – 1, my inner sceptic – 0.
Another special moment is when Natalie and Josh perform a duet of their own version of the Christmas classic, ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ by Michael Bublé and Idina Menzel. The film did make me realise that the original song was… quite rape-y for a lack of a better word. However, Josh and Natalie’s version is warm, romantic, and very consensual. Dobrev and Yang’s chemistry on-screen felt natural and realistic. Even though Josh lied to Natalie at the beginning, his growth throughout the film from an insecure man who hides behind sarcasm to a confident person who embraces his strengths, and his ‘not-so-masculine’ hobby of candle-making is endearing.
So, Hernán Jiménez may have not directed the next Quentin Tarantino classic that will end up as a poster on the wall of a twenty-two-year-old film student who ‘swears by’ Pulp Fiction, but let’s be honest no one watches a rom-com for its cinematography. I may have not needed tissues, but I was left feeling as wholesome a university student on the verge of a mental breakdown can be – and that’s all I’m asking for.