The Love Hypothesis
by Sarah Rothschild
Based on the book by Ali Hazelwood
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?
Will confess that the book description didn’t appeal to me, the trope doesn’t appeal to me, the workplace power imbalance and potential for HR nightmare is a giant red flag (I hate seeing that stuff hand-waved in romances. This is a real-world career grenade), and thus the movie adaptation is not on my list. At all.
Would rather re-watch ‘What’s Your Number,’ because that, at least, was funny.
I thought this book was mid when it first came out and everyone treated me like my brains were jelly. I’m not surprised it produced a mid adaptation!
I have not read the book, partially because I am touchy about romance set in the context of academic hierarchies (I bailed out of Grey’s Anatomy very early on for that very reason). By the time the movie came out I had forgotten that was part of the plot so I gave it a go.
I actually thought it was charming in a light-weight way, partially because it knew so little about how academia works that I was able to hand-wave the rest. Tom Bateman’s character was somehow simultaneously an early career scientist (he’s not tenured faculty) but treated as if he were a leader in his field. Interestingly, I wondered about the age gap and discovered the actors are only seven years apart. But Lili Reinhart was able to convince me she was younger and Tom Bateman looked every one of his 37 years.
I don’t think I’ll watch it again, but it was a fun Saturday night!
@chacha1 plus naked Chris Evans. I’m willing to bet there is 0% naked Chris Evans in The Love Hypothesis.
I’ve tried reading two Hazelwoods (this one and Below Zero) and DNFed both—not out of rage, just not for me. I have to really really like a “this guy SEEMS like an asshole but is actually not because reasons” plot to be willing to overcome my skepticism, ESPECIALLY in m/f romance, so that’s a high bar already.
I read the book description and went “OMG, I am definitely not reading Hazelwood contenmporaries”. I have worked in academia for many years and “he thinks that he will get a grant if someone thinks he’s more likely to stay at Stanford” is the exact opposite of how things work. Academics talk about “two body problem” in that context, finding a place which will support two people is a massive challenge for academic couple.
Besides that, blind peer review – the decision makers don’t even know who you are, never mind who your girlfriend is.
I loved both the book and the movie because I am a Reylo pig and I love my slop. HOWEVER I did find it very distracting and not sexy that they kept calling Adam “Dr Evil” in the movie. I know the characters are too young to know Austin Powers but I’m not!
I enjoyed the movie– a B grade seems right to me. I especially liked Lili Reinhart’s performance and I agree with the reviewers that the Olive/Ahn friendship was one of the best parts of the story. After watching the movie, I re-read the book. What stood out for me this time was the economic gap between Olive and Adam. He’s constantly buying her food as well as offering to resolve other problems for Olive because of the difference in their incomes. I didn’t notice age gap as an issue in either the book or the movie. Also, I agree with @Arden that hearing characters refer to Adam as “Dr. Evil” was odd, but not because I was reminded of Austin Powers. I just kept thinking that all those Stanford STEM grad students could have thought up a more clever nickname for their least-favorite mentor.
This detail is driving me crazy…was Adam a postdoc in the book or laddered faculty?
(My memory of the book is very effective pining that pulled me through the whole story despite the absolutely appalling public displays of affection Ahn pushed Olive to perform. I can’t go back in to check. The PDA was horrifying.)
I stopped watching the film after Anh was described as Filipino. Yes, the actress that played Anh has Filipino heritage and what O saw of her performance I enjoyed, but Anh is clearly delineated as Vietnamese American in the book. Two separate cultures!
I read an argument the other day that the works of at that seem the most dated are the ones that had their impact temporally concentrated. I think the original TLH was in that category: I never liked it (for me, the deal-breaker was that a woman of Asian descent working in the hard sciences at Stanford would be alone and dependent on one friend) but I think there was an audience eager to see women blaze their way through academia and get the guy too. And I think there was also a meta-narrative, where fanfic writers and readers could cheer on Ali Hazelwood as one of their own even if they hang felt the same connection to E. L. James.
@md: As someone who has an office job in academia, my colleagues echoed the same thing! Specifically regarding universities are more likely to throw money at single faculty in an effort to keep them around.
One even said, “If my spouse took their shirt off at a BBQ with other faculty and colleagues, I would divorce him on the spot.”
@Deborah
The Amazon book description calls Adam a “young hotshot professor”.
@Amanda
OMG, totally – shirt off at a BBQ with other faculty and colleagues, I don’t even know where to begin.