Following a merger between their two firms, short publishing assistant Lucy (Lucy Hale) falls for her tall work rival Josh (Austin Stowell) in this Christmas rom-com they should have called Midget Jones’s Diary.

This 2021 adaptation of Sally Thorne’s enemies-to-lovers novel plays out as propaganda for the aggressively heteronormative notion that opposites attract: she’s a Dell user who writes Smurfs fan-fiction in her spare time; he’s a Mac user who doesn’t have learning difficulties. Clearly the publishing industry needs better protections from perverts for individuals who have the mind of a child. Thank god she isn’t dressed as an elf or Zooey Deschanel would also be sniffing around.

The scenario gets creepier still when it turns out Josh has spent months documenting what Lucy is wearing to work every day, and has even painted his apartment the colour of her eyes; a gesture she finds so romantic that she kisses him before he has a chance to say, “and the carpet the colour of your blood.”

And yet their relationship is refreshingly egalitarian compared to the toxic power dynamics that characterise the 50 Shades of Grey school of romance movies. Lucy and Josh are actually equals at work, and equally good at the jobs they never seem to do because they’re too busy flirt-fighting and thinking about how various body parts would match with their furniture. But having them constantly at each other’s throats gives the characters more spark than the usual festive rom-com protagonist whose only personality trait is Christmas, and Hale and Stowell have enough chemistry to bridge their otherwise irreconcilable height difference.

Narratively however, the film falls a few Smurfs short of a village. The Hating Game dutifully ticks all the romance tropes (third-wheel love triangle, only one bed etc.) with mind-numbing repetition, ending most scenes with the pair not having sex and resetting to pretending to hate each other; a relentlessly pointless cycle for all concerned. There is also a subplot about the couple going for the same promotion, which ends up as redundant as they both deserve to be after making their workplace a living hell for the poor colleagues forced every day to watch 50 shades of paint drying. And while The Hating Game proves one of the better holiday romance movies on Netflix, it is ultimately more interesting as an HR training film.