The Love Hypothesis review: Lili Reinhart-Tom Bateman's chemistry makes this fake-dating trope feel brand new
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Scenes from The Love Hypothesis Photograph: (X)
The Love Hypothesis stars Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman, playing the roles of Olive and Adam with the premise of fake dating. The movie is based on Ali Hazelwood's novel.
Do you ever get those butterflies in your stomach when you start feeling something for someone or even just sense a little spark of attraction? The Love Hypothesis brings exactly that feeling to the screen, with Tom Bateman and Lili Reinhart creating a chemistry that makes their romance hard to look away from. As Olive and Adam navigate a fake-dating arrangement that slowly becomes more complicated, the film delivers the kind of romantic tension that can leave you smiling at the screen.
Plot of The Love Hypothesis
The film opens with Olive arriving at Stanford for her PhD research interview. She is nervous, has trouble with her expired contact lenses and ends up in a laboratory bathroom. She hears a male voice telling her to leave. Unable to see him properly, she assumes he is simply a rude scientist, and the interaction ends with him encouraging her before she leaves.
The story fast-forwards to two years, showcasing Olive, a PhD candidate at Stanford researching pancreatic cancer. She is ambitious but somewhat insecure, especially compared with her confident best friend and fellow researcher, Anh. Olive is also interested in Jeremy, a man she has liked for years.
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Olive begins noticing that Jeremy and Anh have obvious chemistry. Anh, however, refuses to act on her feelings because she believes Olive still likes Jeremy. Olive doesn't want her best friend to hold herself back because of her. So Olive tells Anh that she has moved on and is seeing someone else. Except she isn't. Anh becomes suspicious when Olive claims she is going on a date. When Anh comes looking for her at the lab, Olive needs to prove that she really has a boyfriend. She spots Adam near a water fountain and impulsively asks him to kiss her. Adam agrees. Anh sees them, believes Olive's story and leaves. Olive has no idea that the man she has just kissed is the notoriously intimidating professor everyone calls "Dr Evil".
As Olive and Adam stage public appearances, coffee dates, and lab interactions to fool their peers and faculty, their strict business arrangement begins to blur. Behind his stern exterior, Adam shows surprising attentiveness, while Olive—who identifies on the asexual spectrum, grows emotionally close to him. The dynamic shifts during deeply vulnerable moments and extended private sequences, cementing a genuine emotional and physical connection between the two scientists.
How different is the film from the novel?
In the book, Olive plays an audio recording of Tom sexually harassing her during a heated public confrontation between Tom and Adam. In the movie, Anh is the one who fills Adam in on Tom's behaviour, leading Adam to confront Tom directly, and the film jumps ahead two years to show Olive as a Stanford professor nicknamed "Dr Smite".
Anh’s background is changed from Vietnamese in the book to Filipina in the movie, complete with a touching floating lantern scene in Michigan during Christmas break. Meanwhile, Adam’s childhood best friend and foil, Holden Rodrigues, is completely cut from the film.
The movie changes this part from the novel: Jeremy and Olive were previously a couple in the book, but in the film they have never dated, and he has simply been Olive's long-time crush.
What works?
The main takeaway from this film is definitely the chemistry between Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman. Lili Reinhart brings Olive an appealing combination of intelligence, awkwardness and emotional vulnerability. She makes the character feel more than just the typical rom-com heroine, particularly in the quieter moments when Olive is trying to work out what she actually wants. While Tom Bateman embraces Adam's grumpy, intimidating exterior while allowing glimpses of the softer character underneath. His performance works particularly well once Adam's relationship with Olive begins moving beyond the rules of their fake arrangement. As a couple, their exchanges have enough humour and tension to make the familiar fake-dating setup enjoyable rather than predictable.
The premise may be familiar, but the academic setting gives it a slightly different flavour. Olive and Adam are surrounded by research, laboratories, career ambitions and the competitive environment of academia, which gives the story more texture than a standard workplace rom-com.
In addition, Olive's decision to start the fake relationship is rooted in her friendship with Anh rather than simply her own romantic ambitions. That friendship remains an important emotional thread throughout the film.
What does not work?
The novel's slow-burn romance part is slightly reduced. The adaptation makes several cuts and changes to characters and scenes from the novel. One of the most noticeable is the absence of Holden, whose presence in the book adds another layer to Olive and Adam's wider social and academic world.
The film also introduces some new scenes while shortening or removing others, making the adaptation more compact and focused on the central romance.
Final verdict
The Love Hypothesis doesn't reinvent the romantic-comedy formula, but it doesn't need to. Cinephiles, who haven't read the novel, definitely give you an idea of their characters and how they are as individuals in detail. Overall, Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman gave this adaptation enough chemistry and heart to make it a fun watch for both rom-com fans and viewers discovering Olive and Adam for the first time.
The Love Hypothesis is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
