To Cringe or To Swoon at ‘The Love Hypothesis’

Prime Video recently released yet another romance book adaptation, “The Love Hypothesis.” One would think that after producing dozens of book-based rom-coms, Prime Video would know how to do it well. Indeed, they do not.

The recently released romance movie was adapted from Ali Hazelwood’s 2021 bestselling book of the same name. The plot follows popular romance tropes, including a fake dating arrangement and forced proximity. Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman play the leading couple, Olive Smith and Adam Carlsen. Olive is an optimistic Ph.D. student at Stanford University with a passion for biology; Adam is an intimidating, high-achieving professor, also in Stanford’s biology department.

With Adam as a professor and Olive as a graduate student, Adam has power over Olive; however, the movie never addresses this. I believe the movie’s silence on this matter implicitly normalizes the power imbalance inherent to their relationship. This is dangerous, especially since the movie is primarily being advertised towards young women and girls. Such an audience, due to its youth, is highly susceptible to the normalization of unsafe power dynamics in romantic relationships. This audience is also the most vulnerable to such relationships and the most likely to be taken advantage of in relationships where one partner has power over the other. “The Love Hypothesis,” in my opinion, exacerbates this vulnerability and encourages young women and girls to enter relationships that exploit them.

Furthermore, the utter disregard for consent and disrespect towards Title IX, in both the book and movie, was appalling. Olive and Adam’s first kiss was nonconsensual. Adam even, justifiably so, threatened to file a Title IX report for sexual misconduct after Olive kissed him without consent in the Biology Department building. It is beyond absurd to build a romance around a nonconsensual sexual encounter. The entire situation downplays and disrespects Title IX, a necessary and serious federal protection for people facing sex-based discrimination and sexual harassment. I am disturbed by the fact that a best-selling book would include this plot point, and I find it odd that Prime Video would entirely reinvent other scenes, but leave this as is. The choice to include such a downplaying of Title IX and a nonconsensual first kiss is one that Hazelwood should be ashamed of and Prime Video should have reconsidered and rewritten.

I’m sure you are now wondering why this movie is so popular. After all, there must be a reason people are willing to overlook the unsafe power imbalance, nonconsensual first kiss, and downplaying of Title IX.

Is it that the characters have enticing developments and great depth? No. Characters are given tragic backstories in place of natural human emotions and character progression arcs. Hazelwood and Prime Video — when writing the book and movie script, respectively — opted to give Olive dead parents and a sexually predatory superior (Dr. Tom Benton) rather than develop depth in her character. It seems the author and director alike had no interest in developing and deepening her character, believing that her being an orphan and a victim could achieve that aim with far less effort.

Then, certainly the characters are adored by audiences? No. Beloved characters and their defining dynamics were gravely altered, making them unrecognizable and even unlikeable. This was especially evident in Olive and Malcolm Browne’s friendship. Malcolm, in the book, was sweet and supportive; in the movie, he was neither. Not only was he stripped of his fundamental features, but his backstory was erased. A viewer who has never read the book would not even know why or how he and Olive ended up friends and roommates. That is wild considering the fact that he plays a major role in the plot. 

So, it must be that the dialogue is enticing and natural? No. Characters often point out the obvious and restate basic plot points. Additionally, Sarah Rothschild, the screenplay writer, failed to convey the humor aspect of awkward humor, making the characters and conversations simply awkward. The film was littered with poorly constructed science puns and terminology that had no logical connection to the characters or their conversations. Even their love confession involved a useless debate about whether their love story is a type one or type two error. 

Yet, defying all logic, “The Love Hypothesis” was No. 1 on Prime Video’s global movie chart following its release. One and a half months later, the movie is still in the top ten. Why, then, are all these people watching this movie? Advertising. 

Prime Video ran a highly effective marketing campaign for “The Love Hypothesis.” The brunt of the advertising ran on social media and successfully tapped into a young female audience and a loyal base of romance book enthusiasts. 

The movie has its own TikTok account, which routinely gets millions of views. The tag #TheLoveHypothesis has well over 100,000 TikTok posts and almost 200,000 Instagram posts. Reinhart, the female lead, ran a community-first marketing campaign on her personal TikTok account for “The Love Hypothesis.” 

Tapping into the romance book fandom, the lead actors Reinhart and Bateman collaborated with Quinn, a mobile app that produces audiobooks of erotic romance novels, to narrate a three-episode original immersive audio romance, “Olympus U.” Additionally, Prime Video launched a book club for book-to-movie romance adaptations as part of the marketing campaign for “The Love Hypothesis.” Moreover, the movie’s teaser trailer was released at Prime Video’s Obsessed Fest fan event, which was primarily aimed at romance readers.

Beyond the facade of this marketing campaign, however, is a cringe-worthy, rather than swoon-worthy, movie defined by underdeveloped characters and the normalization of unhealthy relationship dynamics.