The Love Hypothesis review: Sweet adaptation – but they forgot the sex

The Love Hypothesis, Prime Video’s latest release, is an enjoyable enough quirky rom-com – but it’s missing the spice its devoted fans will be hoping for.

Based on author Ali Hazelwood’s extremely popular STEM romance of the same name, the film is an adaptation of the original BookTok sensations during the Covid lockdowns.

The story began as ‘Reylo’ fanfiction about the relationship between Star Wars characters Rey and Kylo Ren (played by Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver) before Hazelwood reworked it into a novel.

The film’s casting then added another layer of excitement, with Hazelwood fans thrilled to see Lili Reinhart paired with Tom Bateman – who happens to be Daisy Ridley’s real-life husband.

Directed by Claire Scanlon (Set It Up) and written by Sarah Rothschild, it’s fair to say it arrives with plenty of hype.

In the film, PhD student Olive (Reinhart) invents a boyfriend to convince her best friend Anh (Rachel Marsh) to date their friend Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay).

But when Anh catches Olive working alone in the lab one Saturday night, Olive panics and kisses hotshot professor Dr Adam Carlsen (Bateman), who is nicknamed ‘Dr Evil’ by students for his intimidating reputation.

Olive then persuades Adam to fake a relationship with her to keep Anh convinced – while Adam hopes the arrangement will help him secure an extension to his university funding after being deemed a flight risk.

It’s an unrealistic and somewhat laughable premise, as the story touches on Adam’s entirely reasonable option of filing a sexual harassment claim.

However, fake dating is one of the most popular romance tropes, and this latest version does well to sell it without it being too cringey.

There’s also a sweet and easy chemistry between its leads, particularly in the clumsy initial interactions – there’s a mortifying hug and forehead kiss – but it’s one that could have burned a little hotter.

The Love Hypothesis’s famous climactic sex scene, for example, is a bit of a polite and rushed letdown. Of course, it was never going to match the book for on-page horniness, but it needed a fair bit more heat alongside the sweetness to match fans’ expectations, as well as offer something new and exciting to the genre.

The film also glosses over Olive being demisexual and the vulnerabilities that brings to exploring a relationship, especially when it turns physical, which is a big theme with Hazelwood’s characters.

However, while the central relationship struggles to translate all its elements well from page to screen, the acting is very good.

Reinhart makes for a convincingly awkward but also adorable Olive, entirely relatable as a heroine, while Bateman does well with Adam’s spikiness and as foil to Reinhart – although his interpretation is rather cooler than the Adam in the book.

The true revelation of the film though is the fabulous Marsh (The Morning Show) as Anh, who radiates a protective and understanding vibe as Olive’s BFF, projecting a meaningful friendship onscreen that you would entirely understand Olive – to whom she has become family, following her single mum’s death – risking everything for.

Jaboukie Young-White (Abbott Elementary, Companion) is also entertaining as the fun-loving, hard-partying Malcolm, another friend of Olive’s who has made Adam his nemesis.

In fact, in The Love Hypothesis the gentle comedy often outweighs the romance, which keeps things ticking along nicely even if it’s not quite the central relationship as portrayed in the book.

Prime Video has really hyped The Love Hypothesis as one of the biggest titles in its recent strategy of flinging itself headfirst into BookTok adaptations (Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus and the Your Fault series previously, as well as the upcoming romantasy adaptation Fourth Wing and Elsie Silver’s Rose Hill cowboy romances).

However, it does hint at the problems much-hyped adaptations of much-loved properties can face when it comes to meeting fans’ sky-high, often incredibly specific expectations.

The Love Hypothesis is streaming on Prime Video from today.

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