Love Hard

Love Hard is an 2021 film. The movie stars Nina Dobrev and Jimmy O. Yang. The supporting cast include Darren Barnet, James Saito, Harry Shum Jr., Mikaela Hoover, Matty Finochio, Heather McMahan, Rebecca Staab, and Althea Kaye. The movie was released via Netflix.

Nina Dobrev plays Natalie, a serial online dater out of Los Angeles who writes about her disaster of a dating life for job. Natalie finds a cute guy out of Lake Placid New York and they hit it off. Natalie decides to take it to the extreme and travel out to meat this cute guy for Christmas. When she gets there, Natalie finds out that she has been cat fished. The cute guy, Josh Lin, is not the person in the photos. While at a bar trying to figure things out, Natalie sees the cute guy from Josh's profile, Tag. Natalie wants to impress Tag, but fails and is semi-saved by Josh. While at the vet, Josh and Natalie decide to deal. Natalie plays along as Josh's girlfriend for the holidays and Josh helps Natalie get together with Tag. Will this deals work?

Having just finished The Opening Act the day of, I went striahgt into another Jimmy O. Yang movie. And to be honest, the characters were not that much different. However, Josh Lin was his own unique being too. As for the story, its not crazy different from all the other rom-coms out there. There's a love, a misunderstanding, a reconcilation plot, and the realization you were meant to be together all along. Love Hard is pretty much along those lines. And it was great. I had a blast watching it with my family. And like all Rom-coms, some raunchy items were inserted to get some laughes to get you out of thinking its a serious movie.

Spoiler alert! Don't read this if you have not seen the movie. I like the movie as it is a play on words of the two movies that the protagonist talk about. Die Hard is Natalie's favorite Christmas movie along with her justifcations and Tag's favorite movie is Love Actually. Take one work from each movie to get Love Hard.

The Opening Act

The Opening Act is an 2020 film. The movie stars Jimmy O. Yang. The main supporting cast are Alex Moffat, Cedric the Entertainer, Jermaine Fowler, and Neal Brennan. The rest of the cast show up in more of a cameo sense and include Debby Ryan, Ken Jeong, Roy Wood Jr., Bill Burr, Russell Peters, Iliza Shlesinger, and Whitney Cummings. The movie is the directing debut of Steve Byrne.

Jimmy O. Yang plays Will Chu, a insurance claims worker who does stand up at a local club. Will's dream is to be a stand up comedian, but is scared to go all in. When a local friend presents him with an opportunity, Will has to decide to take it or not. Will goes all in and even quits his job. Will is "the opening act" and emcee of a weekend at a Improv with a famous established comedian, Billy G. Will Will be able to impress the right people and get his chance at a life of stand up?

This was a coming of age story movie. You can kinda see it from the trailer and you knew it was going to be an happy ending. However, with any coming of age story, the middle portions will be ripe with failure and self doubt, before they get it together to succeed.

I really enjoyed this movie. I had had my eye on this for many months and finally pulled the trigger a weekend ago and got it off Amazon Prime Video. I spent 3 sessions to finish this over the week right before I started on Jimmy's Love Hard. Which made my family confused as they walked by to see me watching Yang for over a week. Jimmy O. Yang is great and I hope him much success in the future. I highly recommend this movie.

Part of the movie does dive into the protaginst as an Asian American. It does not ask for pitty, but it is one of the roadblocks that was faced. I thought it was dealt with well.