The Love Hypothesis review: Fake dating, real sparks and a genuinely swoon-inducing rom-com is hard to resist

The Love Hypothesis review: Releasing on Prime Video on September 23, this romantic comedy is an adaptation of a beloved Ali Hazelwood book.

The Love Hypothesis movie review

Cast: Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman, Rachel Marsh and Jaboukie Young-White.

Director: Claire Scanlon

Rating: ★★★.5

It isn't often that a story jumps from the niche corners of internet fanfiction to a mainstream romantic comedy, but Prime Video’s adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis pulls it off effortlessly. Rather than burying its internet origins, the film leans into the absurdity of the “fake dating” trope while grounding it in the hyper-competitive, male-dominated ecosystem of university STEM departments.

The Love Hypothesis review: A grumpy professor, a fake boyfriend and a very swoony romance.

The plot

Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart) is a Stanford PhD student researching pancreatic cancer. She is smart and determined, but life in academia comes with its own set of struggles, from chasing limited grant funding to dealing with her anxiety around public speaking. Her love life, meanwhile, is a whole other mess.

Her best friend Anh (Rachel Marsh) is clearly developing feelings for Jeremy, Olive’s old crush, and Olive can see that the feelings are mutual. To convince Anh that she has genuinely moved on, Olive lies about having a boyfriend. But when Anh wants to surprise her during one of her working nights at the laboratory, Olive panics. She spots a man in the hallway and, without thinking twice, kisses him. Unfortunately, the man she chooses is Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), a brilliant but notoriously intimidating biology professor who has earned the nickname “Dr. Evil” around campus.

This one impulsive kiss soon becomes a fake relationship. Adam agrees to help Olive keep up the lie, but he has something to gain from the arrangement too. A stable relationship could help convince the university that he is committed to staying at Stanford, especially with millions of dollars in research funding at stake.

The plan seems simple enough: a few staged dates, some convincing public displays of affection and just enough chemistry to make everyone believe they are together. But as Olive and Adam spend more time around each other, the lines between pretending and actually falling for each other begin to disappear. What was supposed to be a convenient arrangement starts feeling a lot more real than either of them expected.

Movie Review

The Love Hypothesis

3.5/5

2026-09-22T18:30:00+0000

Romantic comedy

Olive Smith, a fiercely driven biology Ph.D. candidate whose carefully structured academic life is thrown into chaos when she panic-kisses Dr. Adam Carlsen, Stanford’s most notoriously intimidating professor, leading to a mutually beneficial fake-dating arrangement. 

Director

Claire Scanlon.

Cast

Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman, Rachel Marsh and Jaboukie Young-White.

Verdict

Sharp, hilariously awkward, and scientifically engineered to make your heart race, The Love Hypothesis is peak comfort cinema. It takes the beloved fake-dating trope and elevates it with molecularly perfect casting, proving that true romantic chemistry is a theory that never fails when tested this well. 

Performances

The success of any romance rests entirely on the shoulders of its leads, and the casting here is molecularly perfect. The film really comes alive when Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman share the screen. She plays Olive with an easy awkwardness that never slips into the usual over-the-top rom-com quirkiness. She feels like a young researcher who is genuinely overwhelmed by work, self-doubt and the pressure of trying to make it in a field where she constantly has to prove herself.

Tom, on the other hand, has a lot of fun with Adam's Mr. Spock-like exterior professor persona. He looks intimidating when we first meet him, but there is enough vulnerability underneath that you quickly realise there is more to him than the cold exterior. Instead of spelling out Adam's feelings, Tom lets them come through in his expressions, small pauses and the way he quietly looks out for Olive.

Both of them also understand the fun of the fake-dating setup without playing it too heavily. Their banter, awkward moments and increasingly obvious attraction give the romance the spark it needs, while the quieter scenes allow the emotional connection between Olive and Adam to build at its own pace. By the time the film reaches the infamous 'Chapter 16' moment from the book, the emotional payoff feels completely earned.

Direction

Claire Scanlon, the director behind Netflix's 2018 Set It Up too, clearly knows the kind of romantic comedy she is making. The film has all the familiar ingredients: a fake relationship, a grumpy professor, an awkward heroine and a romance that takes its sweet time to unfold. But it never feels like Claire is ticking boxes on a rom-com checklist. She lets Olive and Adam's relationship develop naturally, giving Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman enough space to build that chemistry without rushing them towards the inevitable.

A comedy scene as simple as putting on sunscreen, or an honest conversation between the two, Claire allows these moments to sit with the audience instead of immediately moving on to the next joke or plot point, and that helps the slow-burn romance feel more believable. She treats the academic setting with respect, ensuring that Olive's ambitions are never sidelined for the sake of the romance.

What works

The slow-burn romance is where The Love Hypothesis works best. Olive and Adam are not rushed into falling for each other. Their relationship gets room to grow through small moments, awkward conversations and the trust they gradually build. So when they finally stop pretending and acknowledge what they feel, the payoff lands because the film has taken the time to get them there.

Rachel Marsh (Anh) and Jaboukie Young-White (Malcolm) are also a lot of fun as Olive's friends. They bring some of the lighter moments to the film, but their characters never feel like they are there simply to crack jokes. Their friendship with Olive feels lived-in and gives her a strong support system outside her relationship with Adam.

The film also takes a thoughtful approach to Olive's demisexuality. It is not treated as a twist or something that needs to be explained away. They anchor the film's second love story which is the the unwavering bond of adult friendships.

What doesn’t work

In streamlining the novel for a tight 1-hour-and-52-minute runtime, the STEM-centric academic politics are noticeably watered down. This is most noticeable with Arty Froushan’s Tom, who comes across as a fairly predictable antagonist rather than a serious threat to Olive’s career. Because the conflict is not given enough room to build, the final stretch lacks some of the impact and satisfaction that the book manages to deliver.

Verdict

By honouring the emotional core of Ali Hazelwood’s universe while giving its leads room to breathe, Claire Scanlon delivers a rare book-to-screen adaptation that feels both deeply respectful to its fandom and magnetic to total newcomers. Consider this hypothesis undeniably proven.

Sharp, hilariously awkward, and scientifically engineered to make your heart race, The Love Hypothesis is peak comfort cinema. It takes the beloved fake-dating trope and elevates it with molecularly perfect casting, proving that true romantic chemistry is a theory that never fails when tested this well.