Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
It’s only a shot in the dark, but I’m going to guess that the 2026 film adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, a romantic campus comedy, is quite different from the book. Many things might not have made it into the film, as is usually the case with book-to-movie adaptations.
Directed by Claire Scanlon, the 1-hour-50-minute film stars Lili Reinhart as Olive Smith, an underconfident PhD student at Stanford University who spontaneously kisses biology professor Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman) to convince her best friend Ahn (Rachel Marsh) that she’s in a relationship. The two then start fake-dating to keep up the charade, since Adam believes it could improve his reputation among his peers and perhaps help him secure a major grant.
Jaboukie Young-White plays Olive’s roommate Malcolm, who is part of Adam’s team and absolutely hates the professor. So, one of the funniest running gags in The Love Hypothesis is how consistently Malcolm rolls his eyes whenever he sees the ‘couple’ together. Rachel Marsh is instantly endearing as Olive’s best friend Ahn, who obviously senses something is amiss about Olive’s unlikely new boyfriend but sweetly plays along.
Amid all the fake-dating, friendship and campus drama lies Olive’s ambition to secure a grant for her cancer research, which is why she hasn’t had much time for a real boyfriend. But as she spends more time pretending to be in love with the awkward Adam, the two obviously grow closer, while she also finds herself dealing with unwanted attention. She goes from being just another student to the girl dating a successful, even if unpopular professor, which comes with complications she hadn’t anticipated, like being recorded for social media stories or becoming the subject of campus gossip.
Lili Reinhart is cute as Olive, while Tom Bateman convincingly plays the sexy-but-mean professor nearly every student on campus hates, and the two really don’t make much sense together. The onscreen chemistry between the leads borders on cute, but for a romance film, you just don’t see enough of the two of them together in The Love Hypothesis. If anything, this feels more like a story about a nerdy girl going out of her way for her best friend than one about fake-dating a professor known to be evil, unemotional and exceptionally cruel to students.
Tom Bateman’s Adam Carlsen is also tweaked into a typical romantic hero who cannot sense someone’s distress even if they’re crying buckets of tears right in front of him, but magically knows something is wrong with Olive when she turns up with a frown after a nasty encounter with someone. I’m not sure how Adam was portrayed in the book version of The Love Hypothesis, but for someone introduced as having a high IQ and low emotional intelligence, his character feels inconsistently written in the film.
The ending is clichéd and predictable, but for the most part, The Love Hypothesis is an entertaining romance-drama that brings the fake-dating trope into the world of serious science students and professors. After a fun first half, though, the ending feels disappointing and cringey. But at least the film doesn’t indulge in prolonged drama or pointless fights, keeping things mostly crisp and easy-flowing.
Rating: 6 on 10. Watch ‘The Love Hypothesis’ on Prime Video.
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