'Tis the season of holiday movies on Netflix! We might be a good 1 month and 20 days away from Christmas but Netflix has already started decorating its tree with holiday romcoms! In this latest is an LA journalist, Natalie who makes a living by writing columns about her disastrous love life! The perks of online dating? Meeting others' husbands, being ghosted and catfished. Name any type of tragic date night, Natalie has probably lived it. But this hopeless romantic is still waiting for the perfect guy and lo and behold, she matches Josh! A beautiful human specimen (Our very own Paxton from Never Have I Ever) who loves outdoors and spells out P-E-R-F-E-C-T for Natalie. They talk and text every day and she feels Josh gets her like no one else. Convinced by her best friend who doles out catastrophic pieces of advice regularly, Natalie decides to surprise Josh for the holidays! No idea how or where she gets his address from (Stalker alert), but she ends up at his house to meet Josh. But to her biggest surprise (But not to ours) Natalie has been catfished. Who she had thought to be ripped, muscular, and well beautiful is a completely different guy! Realizing she has been catfished she tries to leave but realizes that her "Josh" actually exists and his name is Tag. After a few ill-fated drinks, karaoke, and a trip to the vet, Josh and Natalie make a deal. They pretend to be in a relationship in front of Josh's family while Josh will set her up with Tag for real. A perfect recipe for a holiday disaster! Love Hard is the first of Netflix's holiday movies this year and it is rather an unfortunate one. Of course, it follows the recipe of love gone wrong but eventually, everyone ends up happy with a twist of catfishing but it fails to carve a niche for itself. And also many things seem to be wrong with Love Hard. Even though in the beginning Natalie is rightly indignant about being catfished, she sets out to do the same thing to Tag. She changes her entire personality to make him fall for her even forgetting her principles on the way. And while trying to fight against the gender norms they do little but reinstate them. While trying to establish that looks don't matter, Natalie chooses Josh/ Tag solely based on his looks. But despite all these flaws Love Hard is still a sweet start to the Holiday season! By SB
