WARNING! This post contains spoilers for both The Love Hypothesis book and movie!Â
Before I begin, I just want to say that I know a movie cannot capture every detail from a book. However, I do think that a book-to-movie adaptation should still capture the overall essence of the characters and the storyline, especially since a lot of the incoming viewers are those who read the book. Here are a few of my criticisms as someone who has read the book and was pretty excited to watch this Fall movie.Â
In the book, Adam is portrayed as someone who is reserved and blunt. However, he also has a dry sense of humor and is pretty thoughtful. One example is when he and Olive first met in the lab bathroom. He thought she was crying and he asked if she was okay. In the movie, he sighs and is only annoyed (which is valid, but still!). In the book, while his feedback towards students’ work was direct and sometimes harsh, he never made it about them personally. In the movie, he insults both the work and the students themselves, which made him seem more mean. I get that this was probably for comedic effect, but it felt a bit out of character.Â
I felt that Adam and Olive’s relationship buildup was really rushed in the movie. At the end of the movie, I was just like, “Oh…okay”. I think having cozier one-on-one conversations between them, just like in the book, could have made me feel butterflies and swoon. I believe if the movie had them open up to each other and interact more, there could have been a stronger connection between the two. Adding this in would have made them being in love more believable. Because, to be honest, neither viewers nor Olive herself really know much about Adam in the movie!
I didn’t like how Olive was given less autonomy in the movie compared to the book. In the book, she was the one who decided how the fake-dating relationship would go and what the ground rules were. She was the one who ended the fake-dating relationship with Adam. She was the one who decided to finally tell the truth about Tom Benton to Adam. This was supposed to illustrate character development because she chose to stop lying. In the movie, it felt like things were happening to her rather than her making her own choices.Â
In the book, Olive doubted whether she truly deserved to present her research at SBD (Society for Basic Sciences), but she later found out that her work underwent a blind review and was selected. The movie made it seem like there was more uncertainty about whether Olive truly deserved to present her research because Tom Benton had asked her to. Keeping the blind review could have made it more certain that she got the opportunity because of the rigor of her research and her own merit.
I do have more gripes, but I don’t want this article to become too long! Even though I wasn’t a fan of this movie, I will say that one aspect that I really enjoyed was the portrayal of Anh and Olive’s friendship. It captured how close they are and how they would do anything for each other.