Love Hard

Natalie Bauer, a journalist in Los Angeles, has little luck in love, so she turns to a dating app and becomes involved with a man she believes lives on the East Coast. She travels across the country to surprise him at Christmas, only to learn that the person she has been chatting with is not who the profile claimed. The man she actually meets, Josh Lin, used someone else's photographs to create his account. He tells her that the man in those photos, Tag, lives nearby, and offers to introduce them, on one condition: she must pose as Josh's girlfriend for the holidays.

Hernán Jiménez directed the film, his first feature, from a screenplay by Daniel Mackey and Rebecca Ewing; McG and Mary Viola produced. Nina Dobrev plays Natalie, with Jimmy O. Yang as Josh, Darren Barnet as Tag, and James Saito, Rebecca Staab and Harry Shum Jr. among the supporting cast. The film runs 105 minutes.

Released in 2021, Love Hard drew a mixed response from critics, whose rating sits at 5.8/10 from 32 reviews. On IMDb it holds 6.3/10 from around 68,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9/10 from just over 1,600 votes, indicating that general viewers responded somewhat more favorably than reviewers did.