When the nights start drawing in, the weather turns frosty and the bombardment of Christmas begins in the supermarkets, there’s only one thing to do and that is embrace the Christmas spirit and bust out the festive movies. As well as the good old faithful’s like It’s a Wonderful Life and Love Actually, there’s always a wide variety of gloriously cheesy new releases and hidden gems to enjoy. First up for me this year was Netflix’s new Christmas rom-com, Love Hard

According to Greek mythology, humans were created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearful of their power Zeus split them into two halves, condemning humans to spend their lives searching for the other half to make them whole again. Such is the romantic and somewhat depressing mythology of soulmates. 

Los Angeles singleton, Natalie, is not having much luck in her search for her soulmates but there is always a silver lining and she has managed to turn her, quite catastrophic, love life into a career, writing a popular column depicting her dating fails, a la Carrie Bradshaw. But it seems she has exhausted her options in LA, wading through seemingly endless dates that wind up with her being stood up, ghosted or being the other woman, so, with some not so gentle prodding from her friend Kerry, Natalie expands her search further afield. 

It seems her wait for the perfect match may be over when she swipes right on the dreamy Josh and they share an instant connection; talking through the night, sharing secrets and arguing over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Certain that Josh is the other half to her ancient Greek mythology, and keen for a successful dating story for once, Natalie takes the plunge, boards a plane and travels 3000 miles to surprise her soulmate for the holidays…. only to find that the tall, handsome outdoorsy guy she was expecting is actually a shy and introverted catfish, living at home in his parents basement.

With Josh desperate to avoid disappointing his family and Natalie in need of a new story, they strike up a deal: If she stays for the week and pretends to be Josh’s girlfriend, he will help her woo his old friend Tag – the guy who’s photos he used for his dating profile. What follows is a series of typical rom-com tropes, escapades and realisations all wrapped up in a big Christmassy bow.

Your enjoyment of this film will depend on how seriously you want to take it, there is a clear element of trying to hit some ‘hot topics’ without any real thought as to how it fits cohesively together with everything else that is going on. We’ve got some righteous indignation about the lyrics of the classic song ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, friendly debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas film or not and questions about the duplicitous nature of dating in general.

Nina Dobrev (Natalie), Jimmy O. Yang (Josh) and Darren Barnet (Tag) are all engaging enough to watch in their own rights but I’m not really sure how well they gel together on screen and the romantic relationships feel a little superficial and one dimensional BUT……. we’ve got Christmas carolling, gingerbread decorating and a storybook ending and, if I’m really honest, as I start to wind down for the end of the year, I become less worried about challenging the substance of the film and more focused on the enjoyment factor and Love Hard hits the light-and-breezy comforting comedy that I love about romantic comedies, regardless of the time of year.

Love Hard is available* to stream on Netflix.

The Rig is available to watch on Amazon Prime*

*At the time of publishing.