Quirky, cute, funny and charming; all words that can be used to describe the movie adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s book, “The Love Hypothesis.”
The book and its film adaptation follow graduate student Olive Smith, played by Lili Reinhart, who begins fake dating a professor, Adam Carlsen, played by Tom Bateman, to trick her best friend into dating her crush. As far as the typical fake dating trope goes, Olive and Adam fall in love and develop a relationship with each other.
The movie begins just before Olive’s graduate admissions interview at Stanford University. Olive is in the bathroom trying to wash her eyes out after wearing expired contact lenses, and while in the bathroom, Adam walks in and tells her to leave because it is his lab’s bathroom and not the women’s. When Olive explains her situation, she ends up getting a pep talk from Adam about her interview.
Olive gets into the program and while there meets Ahn, played by Rachel Marsh, and Malcolm, played by Jaboukie Young-White. Two years later, Ahn gets asked out by Olive’s crush Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay), but Ahn turns him down, not because she doesn’t share his feelings, but because she doesn’t want to hurt Olive.
When Olive hears that this was the reason, she lies and pretends that she is seeing someone, and when Ahn is about to catch her in the lab instead of on a date, like she said she was going to, Olive finds the nearest guy and kisses him. The guy just happens to be Dr. Adam Carlsen, whom the grad students nicknamed Dr. Evil.
A few days later, Olive is called into Adam’s office for a proposition: pretend to be his girlfriend until the next board meeting. The grant Adam needs for his lab is in jeopardy because he’s seen as not committed to Stanford, so if he can show the board members that he has a girlfriend, he can prove he is not a “flight risk” and receive his grant. Olive agrees to Adam’s proposal to show Ahn that Olive is over her crush on Jeremy, and Ahn can freely date him. The movie goes on to show scenes of cute moments between the two that eventually result in them dating for real.
As a fan of the book, there were a few scenes that I missed in the movie. Although the movie did a great job of following the story line, there was a lot that was missing.
First, the movie completely cuts Holden, Adam’s best friend in the book. Holden was an important character because he served as the love interest for one of Olive’s friends, Malcolm, and was a voice of reason for Adam and part of the final push in getting him and Olive to admit their feelings for each other. Ultimately, taking Holden out of the movie took away a lot of the heart-felt and funny moments that I would have loved to see in the movie.
Another character that was changed in the movie was Tom, played by Arty Froushan. Tom is Adam’s friend from his graduate years at Harvard and is now a professor in Harvard’s biology department. In the movie, Tom is still painted as the villain, but you do not see just how bad of a person he is and how badly his character affected Olive in the book.
I also had a problem with how the movie showed Adam falling in love with Olive. Don’t get me wrong, they did a really good job in showing the exact moment of when he starts to fall for her, but that’s also where the problem lies. You can see exactly when he starts to fall in love with Olive.
In the book, Adam was always in love with Olive, and had been in love with her for years, even before she brought up the suggestion of them fake-dating, or kissed him, or even told him her name. Taking that small detail out of the movie completely creates a whole new scene where they confess their feelings for each other.
The movie on its own was still such a fun experience to watch. Reinhart is amazing at showing Olive’s quirky and funny side, as well as the anxiety she feels about how people will accept her work. The movie also did a great job depicting the effects of imposter syndrome that graduate students often feel while they are in grad school. Although this was mainly shown through Olive, there were moments throughout the movie where you could also see how it affected Olive’s friends and fellow classmates.
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Overall, the movie was a cute watch and definitely something I would recommend for a night of rom-coms. I was disappointed to see some parts of the book missing from the movie, but it did such a good job of bringing Olive and Adam to life that I fell in love with the story all over again. Considering the prequel to “The Love Hypothesis” will be published in February, the movie was a great way to bring Olive and Adam back into my life before the next entry in the series.
Addie Gerber is the design director for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at design@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
