In my peak pre-teen years, I indulged myself in the massive experience that is “BookTok.” BookTok really took off in early 2020 when people everywhere posted about books and their reviews, and the books went extremely viral. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood was one of those books, and I was one of those people to read it over five years ago.
As I watched the film adaptation this past week, I was brought back into the fictional world and reunited with the couple I read about so long ago.
Olive Smith is a nerdy, driven Ph.D. candidate played by Lili Reinhart, and Dr. Adam Carlsen is a mean, arrogant biology professor played by Tom Bateman. Reinhart played Olive’s character extremely well, both in her acting and her overall appearance. I could tell she understood the type of person Olive was described to be in the books.Â
However, Bateman’s portrayal of Adam was very different from the one I remember reading about (and loving) all those years ago. For example, in the novel, Adam is supposed to be this overbearing, broody type of guy, but only because he is hiding his real self to protect his own feelings. He isn’t this “Dr. Evil” persona just to be mean; he’s trying to protect himself from getting hurt, so he lets himself hurt others instead.Â
All of these character details are oddly ignored in the movie adaptation. Adam is shown to the audience as a really arrogant guy from the start to basically the finish. He has no real redeeming qualities as to why he is this way, and without the addition of his close friend Holden from the novel, it makes it seem like he has no one because of his behavior.
Although the movie itself was pretty enjoyable to watch (when separated from the novel), the second half felt rushed to me. Once the fake dating starts and they begin convincing their colleagues and friends it’s a real relationship, so much happens around them that the relationship gets lost.
Olive and Adam attend all these different events with their different groups as they pretend to be a couple, all while their real feelings start to emerge. To me, these scenes and moments in the second half of the movie felt like filler, mainly taking up so much space and time.Â
By the end, I was waiting to see how the movie would adapt the scene between Tom Benton and Olive. In the novel and movie, Tom is a Harvard researcher who happens to be friendly with Adam, and Olive is seeking to work in Tom’s lab, so they become acquainted. The novel’s climax comes when Tom corners Olive at a conference and bluntly tells her she will only get a position in his lab if she sleeps with him.
This moment in the novel is an extremely sensitive matter as it deals with sexual harassment and unfortunately, I think the movie handled it poorly by comparison. In the book, for example, Olive was able to record Tom’s sexual advances and later show it to Adam, who then violently threatens his former friend in a public restaurant amongst all of their colleagues. During this altercation, Adam also confesses his real love for Olive for the first time.
In the movie, Olive records nothing, but afterward she texts Adam to ask if he can call, and he does nothing but leave her on read. Eventually, when Adam discovers what happened, it’s through Olive’s friend, not even through her. The whole confrontation between Adam and Tom then happens during one of Tom’s classes, without Adam confessing his love for Olive.
With all that in mind, I’m not saying this was the worst movie I’ve ever seen. There were a lot of really great components of this movie that made it enjoyable, but I think book-to-movie adaptations are always tricky for people who actually read the book. Like all readers, I can only compare the movie to the book.
So, was The Love Hypothesis worth the watch? Yes…If you didn’t read the book before.
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