TW: sexual harassment, use of lab animals (not shown suffering) Highlight to read.

Lara: I have a theory that having been raised on rom-coms of the 90s and 2000s, I find it exceptionally difficult for a contemporary rom-com to meet all my expectations. I want wit and charm and swooning and that delicious warm feeling of falling in love. I get this feeling from loads of books, maybe because for me books are more immersive than film or TV.

I say all this because I think my expectations of contemporary rom-coms are unreasonably high.

That giant disclaimer out the way, I did really enjoy The Love Hypothesis. I read the book back in 2021 and reviewed it for the site. I landed on a B-. Most of the time, I prefer the book to the film so I anticipated giving the film around a C. But I didn’t! It was solidly in the B territory too, but for different reasons!

Carrie: I went into this without knowing anything about The Love Hypothesis ( A | BN | K ) except that it was by Ali Hazelwood.

Here’s a quick description of the plot:

Olive Smith is a PhD student at Stanford University who becomes besties with fellow student Anh. Olive gets a crush on another student, Jeremy, but soon realizes that Jeremy and Anh like each other. Olive also realizes that Anh, being a true ride-or-die, will not have a relationship with Jeremy as long as she thinks that Olive likes him, so Olive sets up a fake dating arrangement with Adam, a postdoc at the university. This works for Adam because Adam is trying to get his grant renewed and thinks he has a better chance if the committee thinks he will stay in Stanford (you know, where his fake girlfriend is). So the fake dating shenanigans commence.

Lara: I adored Lili Reinhart as Olive. I found her charming and relatable and I really wanted her to win. I wanted her to have the career AND the guy and the great friendship with Ahn (Rachel Marsh).

Tom Bateman as Adam was hot and tall and very good at being grumpy, but I could have done with a bit more emoting of his inner feelings. I fully confess that I watched the show without my glasses so maybe I missed finer facial details. (My eye sight isn’t that bad and I hate wearing glasses)

Carrie: You did not miss finer facial details, although I give credit to Tom Bateman for being an extraordinary actor since he played the opposite type of character in Hedda. He has range. He does good ‘yearning’ face.

But Adam is a pretty flat character other than his hidden “squishy center.” I found both leads to be very genial and attractive and pleasant to spend 112 minutes with, but I honestly thought Olive had more chemistry with Anh than with Adam.

Lara: Now that you mention it, the real love story is Ahn and Olive. And isn’t that just always the case. Best friends for life. Soul sisters.

From what I remember of the book, it seemed a pretty loyal adaptation, with a few minor exceptions. It’s a rare film adaptation that can depart significantly from the source material without crashing and burning, in my humble opinion.

So I recommend this movie? Yes, I do! It didn’t give me that lovely giddy feeling that romance books or Sandra Bullock rom-coms do, but I enjoyed it and you know how I know that? I only picked up my phone twice and that was to add things to my to do list and I put my phone right back down again. In the attention economy, that’s saying something.

Carrie: I, alas, was more grumpy. I thought a lot of things about the movie were problematic, I had a hard time keeping my attention on it, and it did not cause me to swoon in romantic delight although I did swoon in horror from time to time.

I had a huge problem with the imbalance between Olive being a student and Adam being a postdoc. Adam immediately addresses it and says that the code of ethics permits their relationship because there’s no academic or professional overlap between them. But there clearly is a lot of overlap – because of Adam, Olive has access to faculty in ways she otherwise wouldn’t, and that is both to her detriment and to her benefit. While Olive isn’t Adam’s student, her roommate is, and that causes problems for all three of them.

I also felt bothered by the age gap, which is super hypocritical because I married a man twelve years older than me and we’ve been married for twenty-six years. So of all people to gripe about age-gaps, I’m the least justified. Olive and Adam are less than ten years apart in age.

But in the movie, they really play up how youthful, how naive and shy and vulnerable Olive is, and how much older Adam is. He’s much taller so she’s always on tip toes, he carries her around, she wears adorable clothes that are very cute and play up her youth, and his friends are much older than her friends and their social gatherings are completely different. So on paper the age gap probably wouldn’t have bothered me, but the visual made it impossible to ignore.

Lara: You know, Carrie, now that you mention it, they DID play up her youth, whereas if I’m remembering the book clearly, it was the staff/student thing that bothered me more in the book than the age gap. It would be interesting to reread and remind myself of how the age gap was treated in the book, but I’m afraid I don’t care enough to expend that effort (maybe this should be a C? Or maybe I’m just tired?).

Carrie: I have one last gripe which is that, while I praise this movie for having a diverse cast, and while I adored Anh and would follow her anywhere, they are all in service of these two White people.

Ten years ago I wouldn’t even have noticed but now I’m so grumpy and I really would have found either Anh or Olive’s other friend Malcolm (played by Jaboukie Young-White) more interesting characters to follow.

Lara: Ditto and yes and please.

Carrie: That’s a lot of grumping about what is really a sweet, gentle, low-stress rom-com. I’d give it a C, maybe a C+?

Lara: I think I’ll stick with my B- if only because I didn’t check my phone much which I ALWAYS do when watching TV.

We’re averaging the C/B- grade to a C+, because our database only allows one grade. Have you seen The Love Hypothesis? What grade would you give it? 

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