Personal Thoughts on Love Hard (2021)

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Hi!

So today I would like to share with you all my personal thought on the most recent Netflix movie, Love Hard (2021). The movie actually made into the top 10 recommended on my Netflix for days and not to mention, one of my friends specially recommend it to everyone who’s been on dating app because it’s so relatable. So, without further ado, I decided to watch it.

The premise of the movie is simple. It tells a story of a girl, Natalie Bauer (Nina Dobrev), who has made a career out of writing about her terrible love life. After being let down countless time by men on dating app, she finally matches with a charming sporty guy named Josh Lin. Natalie feels like she met the one, therefore she flew across the country (from LA to Lake Placid) just to surprise him for Christmas. Turns out, Josh (Jimmy O. Yang) doesn’t look like the picture he sent her. He used a picture of a former friend, Tag (Darren Barnet), to talk to women after being ignored on dating app for so long. Josh promises Natalie to help her win over the man whose photos she originally fell for, in turn Natalie has to pretend to be his girlfriend in order to impress his family.

Well, the movie is fun. I like how the movie doesn’t only focus on the relationship of Josh and Natalie, but it also focuses on the Lin family relationship. The scenes with the Lin family is just so heartwarming and endearing. I wouldn’t say I like the romance part, because it’s a romantic-comedy cliché. The plot is just so predictable. And actually, it kind of reminds me with my favorite movie: How to Lose a guy in 10 Days (2003), but Love Hard’s approach is much more modern since it includes the modern dating problem, which is online dating.

In the digital era where the technology is more developed, meeting new people or trying to have a relationship with people is hard. This issue has been brought up before by the movie Her (2013). Well, yes you can meet with new people across the globe with just one swipe, but there’s also disadvantages, for example, you can get catfished like Natalie, or you can have long conversations with someone then being ghosted the next day.

I had a fair share of terrible matches, I met perverts, I’m frequently being ghosted, I met someone who called me fat (probably true, but that was uncalled for), etc. When I’m lucky, I do meet good people. Once, I met this mysterious guy, he didn’t even tell me his name but we talk for hours until dawn. And it was fun until I develop a crush and he ghosted me. Happens all the time.

For me, another downside of being on dating app is it gives me anxiety. I get anxious if the men I swiped right didn’t do the same. I get anxious if a match takes too long to reply. I get anxious if they didn’t reply for days. Sometimes I also get anxious when I had a good conversations with my matches because I’m afraid they will get disappointed if they actually meet me in real life. Some people worry about being catfished, but for me it’s the other way around. What if I unconsciously catfished people?

When setting up the profile on a dating app, we put the best characteristic we can think of so we can attract as many people as possible. Sometimes we hide the truths to impress others. Sometimes we exaggerates a little bit. Sometimes we go as far as lying about our likes and dislikes just to impress our matches. We do all those things in order to form relationship, but deep relationship can’t be taken at face value.

Enough with my story and back to the movie, I like how Love Hard delivers the message maybe we should stop deceiving other people and ourselves in order to appear perfect. As the quotes goes, 

"There’s perfect and there’s perfect for me…"