Love Hard Movie Recap

Does online dating ever go as plan? I highly doubt it. It sure doesn’t seem to be the case for Natalie Bauer (Nina Dobrev), a 30-year-old column writer who profits off her disaster dating. But as she grows older, she’s getting more determined to find real love. When she meets Josh (Darren Barnet), she thinks she’s found her perfect match. And what better way to meet up than showing up to his parent’s house for Christmas, right?

Source: Rogert Ebert

It all goes wrong as soon as Natalie lands. She loses her luggage, the lazy receptionist is also her Uber driver, and the worst of all, Josh turns out to be a catfish. The real Josh (Jimmy O. Yang) turned out to be using his friend Tag’s photos. He’s not what Natalie expected, but once she finds out that Tag is the pictures of what she saw online, she’s destined to find love in a doomed situation.

Source: The Hindu

However, to do so, Josh begs her to be his fake girlfriend for the holidays. He always feels belittled by his brother, Owen (Harry Shum Jr.), and he wants some of the attention to be on him for once. Natalie agrees; that way she can make Josh happy and get her dream man at the same time. Natalie begins dating Tag, but he’s not the same as the one she meant online. He loves everything she hates, and she pretends to be someone she’s not. She allows herself to become someone else to please the boy in the pictures.

Natalie doesn’t mind that she’s losing herself though, and everything seems to be going well. Unfortunately, their fake relationship takes a complicated turn when Josh proposes to Natalie to steal the spotlight of his brother’s baby announcement. Natalie’s convinced that things can’t get any worse.

Source: Distractify

Owen is jealous by the spotlight Josh has taken from him. He decides to go on a hunt to figure out who Natalie really is, because of course no one believes Josh could have real love. He finds out that Natalie is also dating Tag when he catches them at Tag’s family’s restaurant. Out of spite, he hosts a surprise party at the restaurant for the engaged couple. One can only guess how bad that turned out.

But with everyone in her midst, Natalie decides to take advantage of the situation and come clean. Everyone’s devastated, but at least now they know the truth. However, Natalie hadn’t even revealed the truth to herself. The reason she had stayed all along wasn’t for Tag. It was for Josh. He may not have looked like his photos, but he was the person she had fallen for. Perhaps catfishing can lead to a happy ending, however, I wouldn’t advise to catfish in the first place.