If you’ve been following us on all of our Superfans platforms, you’ll know that I have a particular affection for Christmas movies. I haven’t always been partial to Netflix’s selection of Yuletide films but I think I might have finally found The One: Love Hard.

Starring Nina Dobrev of The Vampire Diaries fame, Jimmy O. Yang ,stand-up comedian and star of recent hits Fantasy Island and Silicon Valley and Darren Barnet of my ultimate best coming-of-age series Never Have I Ever ;this festive romper is focused on the most dreaded horrors of modern dating: catfishing.

Within the first 10 minutes of Love Hard, I was howling with laughter, embarrassment and having the distinct feeling that I had met my cinematic soulmate. Dobrev’s character Natalie is a newspaper columnist who writes about her horrible online dating adventures in Los Angeles. Guess what I do when I am not dazzling you with my reviews or being a freelance communications consultant? Yep, I chronicle my misadventures in the online dating space in Cape Town.

I have been stood up, ghosted, dumped because there wasn’t an instinctual convergence on his part (yeah, I was confused too. Read about that here), groped and catfished not once, not twice but THREE freaking times! The one time I sat through TWO hours of awkward conversation and weird texts about how he (the 20 years-older-than-his-photo, overweight, balding, Jewish bachelor whose mom was a racist) loves the colour of my beautiful brown skin while I was in the loo. Yep, I’ve been there, done that and blocked the perpetrator.

So you would think I would have a major problem with how Natalie inevitably falls in love with Josh (Yang), after flying all the way across the country to be with him at Christmas,finding out he was using hot Tag (Barnet)’s photo as his profile pic, roping him into a plot to get the real Tag and helping him deceive his family into thinking she was his girlfriend. I honestly don’t.

I love this little Christmas movie that could because of all the movies I’ve seen on the topic, this one honestly portrays just how damn hard it is to meet that someone special. It’s equally refreshing to see how quickly you can fall in love with someone when you are talking to them all day, every day for weeks, telling them things you wouldn’t necessarily share with the people in your life that you see all of the time. How the the endless search for love or at least, Mr Right Now, could lead to you throwing caution to the wind and ending up on his doorstep unexpectedly.

I’ll leave the plot bashing to Woke Twitter. From my perspective and as a victim of multiple catfishing attempts, I recognise that what the writers were going for is a parable about being yourself always.

That and the fact that they did the second cutest homage ( the first being Four Weddings& A Funeral the series) to Love, Actually‘s infamous put-your-feelings-on-massive-boards scene, is why I Love Hard, actually.

P.S: Die Hard being a Christmas movie is debatable 😉

Love Hard is now available on Netflix.