NOT EVERY BOOK NEEDS TO BECOME A MOVIE

The book to screen adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis was released recently and sadly reinforced what I already believed: that not every book needs to become a movie. Sure, there have been some great book to screen adaptations like the The Summer I Turned Pretty, Little Women, or the The Hunger Games, but recent book to screen adaptations seem to share a common theme; they’re either much worse or much better than the book. This is perhaps due to the explosion in popularity of reading and a ravenous desire from readers to see their favorite books on screen. This has led to studios wanting to both respond to demand and, of course, make a lot of money, with varying success with actually adapting the books. This phenomena is unfortunately leaving some adaptations feeling like they got churned out very quickly, lacking the heart of the source material. 

The Love Hypothesis felt like a let down especially after the stellar romantic comedy/drama book to screen adaptations that have come out the last couple of years like The Summer I Turned Pretty or Off Campus. Interestingly, both The Summer I Turned Pretty and Off Campus books were much less well written than The Love Hypothesis. In the case of Jenny Han, she just seems to be better suited to the screenplay form, as her books lacked a bit of the emotional depth that the fantastic Summer I Turned Pretty and To All the Boys I Loved Before adaptations had. The same goes for Elle Kennedy, but I find her books to be poorly written, relying on tropes rather than plot, with the exception of The Deal, which was a bit cringy but had some satisfying banter. Despite all this, the show was undeniably fun and well done, so what are these screenwriters doing right that went so wrong for The Love Hypothesis? 

First and foremost, some shows and movies have a clearer idea of what they are and how that will be executed. To be fair, perhaps the young adult coming-of-age TV show is just easier to execute well than a romantic comedy, which is a genre that has been flopping in the past decade. However, The Love Hypothesis seemed to be stumbling in the dark. For example, the music seemed to be fighting with itself, shifting from an enjoyable but tonally confusing original instrumental music score to Gracie Abrams. There were also scenes so unfamiliar that even someone who’d only skimmed the book would be immediately able to flag as diverting from the source material.

Generally, I don’t mind adaptations diverting from the source material, both Off Campus and The Summer I Turned Pretty did this, (and I think for the better since the source material was much more lacking), but the changes that were made were in line with the type of characters that were portrayed in the show: undergrads and teenagers. The Love Hypothesis instead presented caricatures of grad students that felt laughable. For example, Olive and Adam go to a party where two teams (drunk vs high) had to build a Rube Goldberg machine. As a college student, this scene felt very out of touch as I really don’t think that PhD students, no matter how much they love science, are going to parties and building Rube Goldberg machines. Also, in the book, Olive is struggling a lot financially, because again, she’s a grad student, so I found the choice to have her wearing trendy outfits and live in a big house with only one roommate presumably in Palo Alto where the book is set to be very off-putting. To be fair, other shows have made this mistake as well, like in the Summer I Turned Pretty where, in season one, Belly wears jean shorts and oversized tee shirts but by the final season is wearing Reformation in every episode…as an undergrad student. 

Scale/world building and design influenced The Love Hypothesis as well. The movie felt confined and the sets felt very fake and plasticy, making the movie very sterile and cold instead of warm and homey like a romantic comedy. The Love Hypothesis also seemed like it could’ve been set anywhere as the set didn’t remind me of Stanford at all, and the Boston scenes could have been shot at any city in America, the lack of location discernibility a huge missed opportunity. The Summer I Turned Pretty and To All the Boys I Loved Before offered viewers lots of diverse and aesthetically pleasing locations to get to know characters. For example, the colorful diner that Lara Jean eats at throughout the movie, and the snowy sky lodge her class stays at near the end. 

I also think some books just translate better to the screen form than others. In the novel, Adam Carlson is cold and grumpy towards Olive and his grad students, but it was much more nuanced, and you got to see his true feelings toward Olive surface over time. Not only was there not enough time given for this in the movie, the way he was portrayed was awkward and stilted. I don’t think this is the actors fault, I just think that this kind of character is much better suited to the page than the screen. The novel was also very dialogue dependent in order to understand the dynamic and feelings of the two leads, but in the movie we didn’t really get to see them interact all that much. As a result, we didn’t get to understand how they feel for one another or why, creating an insta-love feeling that is convincing to no one.

Despite my critiques, I can’t deny that I enjoyed watching the movie. Sure, it felt cringey and off at a lot of points but it had some swoon worthy moments and engaged with the central thesis of Ali Hazelwood’s work: that it’s incredibly difficult to be a woman in STEM. I think this movie may be one that grows on me but I think that it, similarly to shows like Every Summer After, maybe just didn’t need a screen adaptation. I’m hoping that in the future, the film industry, much like the publishing industry, moves away from a model of quantity and towards quality, creating art that is satisfying rather than just meeting the demands of consumers. 

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