Prime Video’s Steamy New Rom-Com Fails The Chemistry Test

Whether it’s Glen Powell and Zoey Deutch in Set It Up, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally or Lana Condor and Noah Centineo in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, the chemistry of its leads is what elevates a romantic comedy from simply fine to must-watch great. Unfortunately for The Love Hypothesis, Amazon MGM Studios’ new romantic comedy movie, there’s none of that buzzy chemistry between stars Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman.

Based on the novel of the same name by Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis follows PhD student Olive Smith (Reinhart), who pretends to date Stanford professor Dr. Adam Carlsen (Bateman) in order to encourage her friend to find love, and to help Adam secure his grant funding for another year. What follows is a perfectly entertaining, and almost entirely forgettable, romantic comedy about two extremely awkward people attempting to fool their friends and colleagues into thinking they’re dating, only to accidentally fall in love in the process.

The Love Hypothesis has all the base elements of a great romantic comedy. It’s excellently directed by Claire Scanlon (Set It Up), whose experience on sitcoms like Abbott Elementary and Brooklyn Nine-Nine ensures the funny moments are truly hilarious. The script by Sarah Rothschild (2020’s The Sleepover) nails the standard structure of a rom-com, hitting all the important beats audiences would expect, even as it fumbles clumsily through the more scientific aspects of Olive and Adam’s story. Further, the supporting cast — especially Rachel Marsh as Olive’s best friend Anh and Jaboukie Young-White as Olive’s roommate Malcolm — bring so much humor and personality to the film, they often outshine the leads.

And that’s the crux of The Love Hypothesis’s problem: Its stars don’t have the chemistry needed to pull off the main characters as they’re written, either in the film’s script or the original book. Part of the problem is very much the characters, especially Adam. The movie spends so much time developing Olive, Anh and Malcom as characters and friends, there’s little time left over for Adam. Aside from a brief conversation with Olive a little more than halfway through the movie, we learn almost nothing about Adam’s history or his life outside his career.

Adam is meant to be an imposing figure who terrifies all his PhD students to the point that they call him Dr. Evil, but this is the result of Adam being awkward and generally terrible at social interactions, which Olive comes to learn over the course of the story. Unfortunately, this makes Adam a difficult character to play, and Bateman’s performance doesn’t always make a case for why audiences should want Olive to fall in love with him, especially when he occasionally comes across as a more conventionally attractive version of Jim Parson’s Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Adam does soften as he falls in love with Olive, and Bateman’s performance shifts into something more endearingly awkward, though it’s a little sudden and jarring.

But Bateman’s Adam isn’t the only cartoonishly awkward character in The Love Hypothesis. Reinhart’s Olive suffers from a similar affliction, with both the script and the actress’s performance making clumsiness and shyness the majority of the character’s personality. It’s a flat archetype that often arises in fanfiction, which does make some kind of sense since Hazelwood’s original book is adapted from fanfiction she wrote about Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars. However, in The Love Hypothesis novel, we get so much more depth to Olive’s interiority, whereas in the film adaptation, aside from some voiceovers at the beginning and end, we only see Olive as she is to the world, which is just as painfully socially awkward as Adam.

Perhaps the social ineptitude of the characters is part of the draw of The Love Hypothesis book, and perhaps different actors may have been able to make that awkwardness endearing, but Reinhart and Bateman simply don’t have the chemistry to make it compelling. There’s little to no yearning, no tension, and no depth to their relationship as depicted in the film. The actors fumble through the third act breakup with the thinnest of excuses to create conflict, to the point that it’s more frustrating to watch than your typical contrived plot point.

There aren’t even any real buzzy, romantic moments that you find in the best rom-coms, like Billy Crystal professing his love to Meg Ryan at a New Year’s party in When Harry Met Sally, or Glen Powell stealing Zoey Deutch’s pickle in Set It Up, or Noah Centineo spinning Lana Condor by her back pocket in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. The closest Reinhart and Bateman get to one of those moments is early on, when Olive kisses Adam without his consent, and he threatens to file a Title IX complaint. It’s a funny scene and a little buzzy, but it’s too early in the film; it’s a shame The Love Hypothesis doesn’t deliver more moments like it.

Lili Reinhart As Olive Smith Kisses Tom Bateman As Adam Carlsen In The Love Hypothesis

Ultimately, The Love Hypothesis is a good adaptation of Hazelwood’s novel, bringing to life all the most important parts of Olive and Adam’s story and characters, even if it doesn’t have the time to truly develop them to the same level as the book. It’s also a decently entertaining romantic comedy, but the lack of chemistry between the two leads holds it back from being a must-watch. Those who enjoyed The Love Hypothesis book will no doubt find something to like about the movie, and anyone looking for a fun rom-com will do well with checking it out. All that said, The Love Hypothesis doesn’t seem destined to make it into the Hall of Fame for romantic comedies, so those not already interested are perfectly fine to skip it.