I’m no scientist, but smart people in lab coats think statistics are important, so let’s do some math. Unless you’re one of those weird, lucky freaks who fell completely and healthily in love with the first person you dated on Hinge, the odds of meeting your person these days are slim. I asked a Brainy friend of mine, and he says your chances of finding a long-term romantic partner in the modern dating environment are roughly [checks notes] “smurfteen percent.” I know that’s hard to believe, but I trust Brainy. He wears glasses.
The good news is I ran some numbers, and according to literally every movie made, there’s a surefire way to find true love. You just have to start with fake love. It’s counterintuitive, but when two people pretend to date, for any reason, there’s a 99.9% chance they’ll live happily ever after. If you don’t believe me, believe the makers of “The Proposal,” “Cactus Flower” and “The Mistletoe Promise.” They would never falsify their research. They’d never do science in this town again.
“The Love Hypothesis” is the latest fake-dating romance in a long, long line of fake-dating romances. Lili Reinhart stars as Olive, a Stanford medical student researching pancreatic cancer. (Ahhhh … romance.) Olive is in love with her friend Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay), but Jeremy is in love with her best friend Anh (Rachel Marsh), and Anh is too loyal to date Olive’s crush. So Olive lies and says she’s moved on and is already seeing somebody.
It’s a selfless act that gives Anh permission to pursue her own happiness. The problem is now Olive actually has to date somebody. With her back against the wall she pulls a classic rom-com maneuver and grabs a random guy and kisses him, just so Anh can see them together. Uh-oh! She randomly chose Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), who everyone on campus calls “Dr. Evil.” He responds by threatening to report her for sexual harassment. It’s a reasonable thing to do but he somehow finds a way to be a snot about it.
Olive explains the situation and, to her surprise, Adam says he’ll go along with the charade in the name of science. After all, she hypothesized that pretending to date him would help her best friend find love, and that’s a theory worth testing. In return she’ll make it look like Adam is putting down roots at Stanford, which will help him renew his research grant. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. As the famous nerd once said: Everything’s coming up Milhouse.
There’s a weird power dynamic at play but Adam says he looked up the Stanford bylaws, which state that doctoral students are allowed to date postdocs, so long as they’re “in completely different fields of study.” It’s a flimsy excuse, especially since the film is hazy about what Adam’s researching, but who knows? Maybe it’s the opposite of pancreatic cancer, whatever that is. (Pancreatic immortality?)
Anyway, there’s a formula to these kinds of romances and “The Love Hypothesis,” based on Ali Hazelwood’s best-selling novel, has done its homework. The script goes through every classic scenario, following two mismatched lovers who can’t imagine being together as they gradually discover they never want to be apart. Reinhart plays a shy, neurotic demisexual — kudos for acknowledging the asexual spectrum out loud — and Bateman plays [checks notes again] “Kylo Ren.”
Yes, “The Love Hypothesis” sprang from one of the most popular fan fiction genres: the Reylo romance. Unlike “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which was originally a “Twilight” fanfic and barely tried to hide it, “The Love Hypothesis” successfully distances itself from both stars and wars. If Bateman didn’t wear all black, act like a broody cad and enter campus cafés to an off-brand “Imperial March” soundtrack — and if he wasn’t married in real life to Daisy Ridley — you might never know. It helps that Bateman plays Adam more like Mr. Spock than an evil space wizard, showing a callous lack of emotion before coming to terms with his human side.
It’s corny, but you can’t be corny without kernels. Specifically kernels of truth. (I get paid to write this. Jealous?) Bateman plays a broad caricature of a heartless jerk but you can change him, so that’s OK. Reinhart plays a prototypical romance protagonist, and if you don’t believe me, her first scene is a meet-cute while she’s adorably clumsy. All of this works because the actors are talented and the conflict is so tried-and-true it’s practically primordial.
“The Love Hypothesis” has no new material, and that’s OK too. Find me a greatest-hits album that doesn’t include the hits and I’ll show you a greatest-hits album nobody wanted. Claire Scanlon, the director of the breakout streaming rom-com “Set It Up,” knows how to follow a formula and make it feel fresh. Not new, just fresh. And fresh is enough.
“The Love Hypothesis” has a lot of chemistry, but it’s accessible to scientists and non-scientists alike. If you love love and you love hypotheses, then you’ll hypothetically love “The Love Hypothesis.”
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