I love fluffy romance for the sparks, and then whoosh, forget about it as soon as I’m done. It’s a quick dopamine hit, fake, fun and fluffy, and that’s exactly what I’m here for.
So when I read The Love Hypothesis, convinced by #BookTube, I expected exactly that. I was also interested because Ali Hazelwood has a PhD in neuroscience and writes romance with women in STEM as her leads, which we don’t see enough of.
When the Prime Video adaptation was announced, I was super excited, and I got even more interested when I found out the book started as Star Wars fanfiction. I’ve never watched Star Wars, so I had no idea about its Reylo origins when I first read the book. But as someone who has read a fair share of fanfiction, I found the whole journey from fanfic to bestselling romance to movie adaptation fascinating.
The original story centred around Rey and Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver), who were reworked into Olive Smith and Adam Carlsen. Some of the connections get even funnier when you realise Dr Tom Benton, the villain, is named after Tom Bateman, who plays Adam and is married to Daisy Ridley, aka Rey herself. The universe really said full circle, and fans online absolutely loved it.
I still kept my expectations low because, honestly, why hasn’t anyone figured out how to make a good book adaptation yet? (Apart from We Were Liars, The Hunger Games and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, obviously.)
So I went into The Love Hypothesis fully expecting it to not be very good. Unfortunately, it didn’t prove my hypothesis wrong. It was quite mid.
I wasn’t rooting for Olive and Adam. I couldn’t feel the sparks between them at all. Not even a little bit. Usually, when I watch this kind of stuff, I’m crying, squealing, kicking my feet, and pausing to recover, but this did absolutely nothing for me. And considering this is supposed to be a romance built around fake dating, pining and mutual attraction, that was a pretty big problem.
Another obvious issue for me was how much they changed from the book.
Other than the opening, which recreates the prologue, there weren’t that many things that felt similar to the book. We only got everyone continuing to dress completely inappropriately for a lab, Dr Evil aka Adam Carlsen, being tall and Olive wearing socks during the sex scene. I didn’t even like the “You’re edible, Olive” dialogue during that part. It was kinda cringe icl.
Where was the pining!?!? A huge part of the book is Adam’s POV and his yearning for Olive. You get to understand that he has liked her for much longer than she realises, and all of that was basically gone.
Even the opening annoyed me because, in the book, that scene is supposed to come back later when Olive realises that Adam is the same guy from that first meeting and that he’s liked her since then. It’s meant to be this big realisation. In the movie, she just figures it out randomly in between everything else, so it loses that little bit of magic.
Also, where was Holden!? Where were their weekly café dates where they actually get to know each other? And the big confession at the café that leads into the whole misunderstanding?
And what happened to Olive recording the conversation with Tom Benton? In the book, she accidentally records Tom’s threats on her phone, and she takes control of the situation. In the movie, she freezes, and Anh ends up telling Adam what happened. I really didn’t like that change.
Then comes the confrontation. Adam barges into a classroom to confront Tom while Olive watches it happen through a student’s livestream!? I wanted Adam to punch Tom in the face, and the fact that he didn’t just didn’t hit the mark for me.
If you’re going to change things from the book, fine. I understand that adaptations need to make changes. But if you’re changing things, at least make the new version work.
And please keep the romance tropes because that’s literally what people are watching this for. By the end, I was basically sitting there thinking: was this The Love Hypothesis? Yes. Did it have the overall essence of the book? Sure. Was it a good adaptation? No.
If you haven’t read the book and just want something fluffy to put on in the background while you’re doing something else, then sure, go for it. But if you’re expecting the chemistry (which, for something called The Love Hypothesis, should be a given?) I don’t think the movie really delivers.
And that disappointed me because the elements were right there!
You have fake dating. You have grumpy-sunshine energy. You have years of pining. You have a woman in STEM. You have the fanfiction-to-bestseller-to-movie journey. You have Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman. How did we not get more from this?!
Overall, I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t feel much while watching it, which is probably the worst thing I can say about a romcom.
