Amazon Prime has just released the much-anticipated movie, The Love Hypothesis based on the novel by Ali Hazelwood. There was a lot of excitement when this was announced and the leads seemed perfect. Lili Reinhart plays Olive Smith and Tom Bateman plays Dr. Adam Carlsen.

The plot follows a fake dating trope where Olive and Adam pretend that they are a couple. Olive is the timid, smart, postgrad student who needs to convince her friend that she is dating someone, so that her friend can date Olive’s crush. Adam needs a date to prove he has a reason to stay local in order to secure funding from the university.

Thus, the story begins!

There have been a lot of BookTok movies and shows that have come out recently, most of which do really well because of the fandom. Off-Campus being the most recent that I enjoyed. It’s nice to see Amazon Prime coming up with good quality content and competing well with Netflix.

I was excited for this film because this is the only novel of Ali Hazelwood’s that I haven’t read. I started with her second novel, Love On The Brain and found her books to be a nice comfort read. I wasn’t too keen on going back as the premise of each of them are quite similar, but I also felt like I was missing out on her most successful novel.

Truthfully, I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie. I found it quite slow, and not very humorous. The cast did a great job, but to me, it felt like the lightheartedness of the film was missing. Stuff happened, it just wasn’t that interesting or important to the plot.

Not only that, but the development of the relationship didn’t feel that natural. I didn’t experience Adam’s walls breaking down except for the major turning moment when Olive has a vulnerable moment in front of a bunch of academics.

There were nice moments and the villain of the story wasn’t too obvious. Olive was both incredibly likeable and relatable but the chemistry wasn’t really there for me.

The dramatic moment towards the end was done well, but that being said, the payoff didn’t feel great. Olive was very calm about everything which in some aspects feels more real. But in other aspects, doesn’t make for a climactic ending.

It really got me thinking about the rom-coms from the 2000’s. Maybe it’s because that’s what I grew up with, and maybe it was a different time but the movies had a lot more joy to them. The characters had fun and it was always a little overdramatic. But that’s what I like about these guilty pleasures. It doesn’t have to be a work of art, it just has to be fun.

With The Love Hypothesis, I was missing out on the fun. We know that they will fall in love and get together as that’s what we expect in the romance genre. It’s about the journey and I can’t say the journey was that exciting.

Overall, it’s a good film, but unfortunately, it’s not one that I will likely be watching again. It’s one I fear that the majority of us will forget about in a year or two.