"Love hard" a Netflix movie and how not to find a true love

"Love Hard" is a romantic comedy released on Netflix for Christmas 2021. I found this movie on Netflix while looking for another one to watch. It is a Christmas movie, but I thought it was worth sharing what I found about it.

Nina Dobrev stars in the feature as a Los Angeles reporter, Natalie, who, after going through several failed relationships, desperately searches for the love of her life, thanks to a friend. In a small town, she meets Josh online, who at first glance seems like the ideal partner, and falls in love.

She crosses the country to meet him, and when she arrives in the small town where he resides, she discovers that everything he had told her was a hoax. She then goes to a nightclub to grieve, and there she sees the man in the photo, for whom she had envisioned a romance.

And like a mature woman, she doesn't even suspect that what a person looks like in the picture has nothing to do with reality, and being the sensible adult woman that she is, she ends up being convinced by the guy she just found out lied to her, to pretend to be her girlfriend so that he will help her win over the "perfect" guy, of whom she knows nothing but is aesthetically standard.

Then she goes to josh's house, who had been lying to her the whole time, and agrees to share a room with him, of course, he sleeps on the floor, but nothing would stop him from getting up in the middle of the night and attacking her if this were a thriller movie.

But thank God it isn't, and our heroine wakes up safe and sound the next morning, and begins to interact with Josh's family, who at first glance seem like a lovely family, that is until her older brother arrives, and it becomes clear that the family has a clear preference for their firstborn and act when he is present in a way that is not very nice to Josh, which doesn't excuse it, but makes it understandable why he felt he had to lie to be accepted by someone.

Parallel to this, Josh and Natalie begin to put into practice their plan to get Natalie to stay with Tag, who she believes to be the perfect guy, until she slowly discovers that they have nothing in common, but she is so desperate to be with the guy she became obsessed with because of a simple photo, that she decides to do what any successful adult woman in her thirties would do and decides to pretend to be someone she is not just to win over the handsome man.

When she finally wins the man over and the two of them have their first kiss, she, as the self-assured woman we all know her to be, discovers that she was wrong all along about whom the right guy really is.

But of course, lies have a short leg and in a small town the leg is even shorter and soon, things get complicated, with Josh's brother finding out everything, and being totally consistent with his attitudes of diminishing and ridiculing his brother at every opportunity, he surprisingly doesn't do this, instead he confronts Natalie, who is taken surprised by an engagement party where everyone is, including Tag who believed she was Josh's cousin, and believe it or not even his boss decided to show up, in a totally clueless attitude.

In the face of all this, and to free the Lin family from a greater embarrassment than the one they are about to suffer, instead of being Josh who cares about the shame of the family, Natalie is a stranger who is filled with empathy and decides to tell the whole truth, and amazingly she ends up taking the blame herself because the guy who started this whole circus, and who is therefore more guilty than she is, is there posing as indignant, and doesn't say a word, on the contrary, he runs out to play the role of victim and leaves Natalie alone with all the guilt and embarrassment for the situation.

After all this, she tries to leave, which would be the right thing to do, but being the unlucky girl she is, she ends up staying in the small town, due to the New Year's holiday, she then stays in a hotel and starts to write for her column because, amazingly, her boss, who thinks he has the right to interfere and meddle uninvited in her personal problems, is in this same hotel and still thinks he has the right to charge for some work, this guy is a nightmare.

With nowhere to run, she goes to her room to try to write, and after a lot of leaning over the computer keyboard she finally manages to develop her article, and then she goes after the guy who lied to her and put her through all that, she makes a big declaration of love where she argues that he is the perfect guy because she knows that he will always be on her side, hello? How come the guy a few scenes ago let her take all the blame for the lies alone, while he stayed there quiet and posing as a victim, and this guy she is talking about is not possible that we are talking about the same guy, no honey, do not kid yourself, if things get tough, you will have to assume all the difficulty alone because the 30-year-old man, who still lives with his parents, will look the other way and act like he knows nothing.

Well, convinced of this idea, she went to his house to submit to this humiliation, and he accepted her back. And if he didn't, where else would he find another woman so crazy? His family, who were also aware of this situation, applauded everything and welcomed her with open arms.

I liked the couple Natalie and Josh, and even hoped they would stay together, until a certain part of the movie. But his attitude when Natalie was forced to tell the truth was bad. And the ending, how as the whole family accepted Natalie back, Josh never apologized for lying about Natalie to begin with. And a wonderful, happy ending for everyone, come on.

Anyway, Love hard presents some precious instructions on how not to proceed if your goal is to be really happy in love. They are:

1) Never go after someone you only know through the internet and with whom you have not even made a video call because contrary to what the movie shows, it is almost impossible for this to end, with you finding the perfect guy for you and being happy with him, and you are likely to get in trouble, with this attitude, like, for example, running into a married guy with a jealous wife, or running into a murderer, rapist or whatever? Which brings me to rule 2;

2)Please, never go to sleep at the house of a man you have just met and who, on top of it, has lied to you. No matter how lovely his family is, the chances of you becoming a police statistic with this attitude are very high. This is risky behavior and in this movie we have a good example.

3)Never pretend to be who you are not to please anyone, like Natalie was doing to get Tag, and Josh did in the app to get Natalie, first that nobody can pretend forever, and if you want to build something solid and lasting, pretending to be who you are not is definitely not a good place to start, second that if you want real love you have to love yourself just the way you are and find someone capable of doing the same, and third and not least if you go down this road, as josh said in his speech to the old people in the asylum, all you will get in the end is a broken heart.

4) Don't take the blame alone for a problem that you didn't even start, and worse, go after the guy who got you into this mess to apologize for the mistake that was also his. Cat, take your part and move on. If he really wants to be with you, he has to make things right. If you do that, you will have to spend the rest of your life apologizing to someone who doesn't even have the courage to assume his responsibilities.

In conclusion, Love Hard is a series of absurdities that try to captivate us and make us root for the main characters, but in my case all they managed to do was to make me watch in disbelief as a beautiful and professionally successful woman chases after love in others, and as a guy desperate for his parents' approval lies to a stranger on the internet and takes her into his house, putting not only himself but all his family in a tight skirt and in the end what was supposed to be a romantic comedy becomes an embarrassing and regrettable story.