Love Hard

Love Hard is a 2021 American romantic comedy film directed by Hernán Jiménez and written by Danny Mackey and Rebecca Ewing. Starring Nina Dobrev, Jimmy O. Yang, and Darren Barnet, the film follows a young woman who travels to her online crush's hometown for Christmas but discovers she has been catfished. It was produced by Wonderland Sound and Vision and filmed in Vancouver from October to November 2020. It released by Netflix on November 5, 2021. The title is a portmanteau of Love Actually and Die Hard, the respective favorite Christmas films of main characters Josh and Natalie. Plot Natalie Bauer is a Los Angeles-based dating column writer who documents her disastrous dates she meets via a dating app. After deciding to expand the app's search radius, Natalie matches with a man named Josh Lin and forms a strong connection to him through many long phone calls. She decides to travel to his hometown in Lake Placid, New York to surprise him for Christmas, promising her boss this will be the end to her dating disasters. However, she soon discovers that she has been catfished by Josh, who used another man's pictures. Natalie is angry, but learns that the man whose pictures Josh used, Tag Abbott, is Josh's childhood friend who lives in the same town. Josh offers to set them up if she pretends to be his girlfriend for the holidays, and Natalie agrees to stay with the Lin family. Josh sets Tag up to meet Natalie and introduces her as his cousin. Natalie lies about her interest in Henry David Thoreau and rock climbing to impress Tag. Tag invites her to climb at a climbing gym, where she hides her fear of heights from Tag and Josh helps her down. Tag invites Natalie on more dates.