Olive could tell her best friend that she no longer wants to date Jeremy. Instead, she kisses another man at the university and ends up pretending he is her boyfriend. That man is Adam Carlsen, a professor most people seem afraid of upsetting. It is a terrible plan, but watching Olive try to explain herself is a funny way to start The Love Hypothesis. Lili Reinhart makes her embarrassment easy to laugh at without making Olive seem stupid.
Olive is working toward a Ph.D., a degree that involves years of research. Adam is already a professor. After the kiss, they agree to act like a couple whenever other people are around. Reinhart is fun to watch as Olive tries to explain the kiss. But as Olive and Adam grow closer, it is sometimes hard to believe they are falling in love. The film gives them plenty of reasons to meet, though not every meeting brings them closer.
Claire Scanlon directs this film based on Ali Hazelwood’s novel. You can watch it on Prime Video without having read the book, and you do not need to know anything about science to follow the story. Olive knows what she is doing at work. Her love life is another matter. That difference gives Reinhart some good comedy to work with, even when the relationship itself is frustrating. This review does not reveal the ending.
Why Olive and Adam pretend to date
Ahn, Olive’s best friend, likes Jeremy. She does not want to date him if doing so would hurt Olive, so Olive tries to prove that she has found someone else. Adam has his own reason to help. People at the university think he might leave, which affects the support he gets for his research. Having a girlfriend would make it look as though he plans to stay. Neither is pretending just to do the other a favor.
The reasons are easy enough to understand. Believing that two adults would actually choose this plan takes more effort. Why not just talk to the people involved? The funny part is watching Olive deal with the problems she has created. Reinhart makes Olive’s bad plan fun to watch, even when the plan makes little sense. Olive knows she is making things worse, but she keeps trying to explain them away. Her embarrassment does more for the comedy than the complicated excuse for dating Adam.
There is another problem with their deal. Olive is trying to start her career, while Adam already has a respected job and a say in university life. The script explains why they are allowed to date, but that does not answer every concern. Adam has more power at work, and pretending to be a couple does not change that. It helps when he listens to Olive and takes her work seriously. We need to see that care, not just hear that their relationship is allowed.
At first, Tom Bateman plays Adam as someone who gives very little away. Olive gets nervous and talks, while he makes it hard to tell what he thinks. That can be funny when she is trying to get herself out of trouble. After a while, though, we wanted more from him. Reinhart is doing so much to keep their conversations interesting that Adam can seem like someone she has to work around rather than someone she wants to spend time with.
Then Adam needs a flu shot, and he is scared of the needle. Olive holds his hand to help him through it. For once, the professor who makes everyone else nervous is the one who needs help. The flu-shot scene gives us a reason to like Adam beyond his looks. Bateman lets him be embarrassed, and Reinhart gets to be the calmer person. They are easier to like together when neither has to keep acting confident.
That scene also makes their growing affection easier to believe. Olive notices that Adam is uncomfortable and does something kind. We can see why he might want to be around her again. A list of rules for their fake relationship cannot do that on its own. The romance needs more moments in which they learn something about each other, especially because his cold manner has made the early conversations so difficult. Here, we finally get one without a long explanation.
Olive has more going on than a fake boyfriend
Olive also has people to turn to who are not Adam. Rachel Marsh plays Ahn, and Jaboukie Young-White plays Malcolm. When Olive is with her friends, every conversation does not have to be about whether she and the professor will kiss. Ahn is especially important because Olive started this lie to help her date Jeremy. We get to know the friend she wants to help, rather than hearing about someone who disappears once the romance begins.
Olive is lying to a friend she cares about, not just pretending with a stranger. That gives us another reason to want her to sort things out. Ahn is trying to be considerate of her feelings, while Olive is making the situation harder than it needs to be. Marsh and Reinhart are easy to watch together. Their scenes give us a break from trying to guess what Adam is thinking, and the friendship matters even when he is not there.
Reinhart also makes a useful difference between Olive being nervous around people and being bad at her job. A clumsy explanation about the kiss does not suddenly make her a poor scientist. Olive is still interesting when Adam is not in the scene. She has research she wants to pursue and people she wants to keep in her life. We do not have to wait for another date to care about what happens to her next.
Her research into pancreatic cancer is connected to the loss of her mother. That explains why the work means so much to her. She is not just wearing a lab coat until it is time for the next romantic scene. An opportunity to continue that research could change her future, and she does not want to waste it. You do not need to understand the experiments to see why she takes that chance seriously.
But knowing her subject does not stop Olive from doubting herself around researchers with more experience. She has to present her work and ask for support from people whose opinions can affect her career. Those worries feel easier to believe than the fake-boyfriend plan. Reinhart gives us someone who wants to do well but does not always trust herself to manage it. It is a more personal problem than simply wondering whether a man likes her.
Adam is more likable when he helps Olive prepare to present her work. He is paying attention to something she cares about, rather than just showing up to look like her boyfriend. Helping Olive with her work tells us more about Adam than his reputation does. These scenes give us a better reason to want them together. We would have liked more time with this version of him before being asked to believe that the two have fallen for each other.
Their more intimate scenes work better than some of the early flirting, too. Olive can say that she is unsure, and Adam pays attention instead of assuming that she is comfortable with everything. That makes him easier to trust. It also lets their time together feel affectionate rather than rushed. We still wanted a stronger reason to believe they had grown close before this point, but the care he shows her here is welcome.
The trouble at work needs more time
Later, Olive faces a much more serious problem with a senior researcher. His behavior involves harassment and threats to her career. This is very different from the embarrassment of friends discovering a fake boyfriend. Someone with influence over her work could harm the future she has spent years preparing for. Without giving away how it ends, this part of the story needed more time to show what Olive is going through.
The harassment story moves too quickly for something this serious. It makes sense that a film about a young woman starting a research career would deal with people abusing their power. But the change from dating jokes to this threat feels sudden. Olive needs time to react, and we need time to understand how it affects her. Instead, the later events move along so quickly that the problem does not get the attention it deserves.
The time spent on the fake relationship makes this more frustrating. We have already watched Olive and Adam work out how to behave around other people. We know why that could become awkward if one of them develops real feelings. Her career is a different matter, and those earlier scenes have not done enough to prepare us for what happens at work. The film does not need to stay light and funny throughout. It does need to slow down when Olive faces something more serious.
The Love Hypothesis images
2 screenshotsThe university setting is easy to follow, with Olive working in the lab and meeting Adam around campus. Away from work, a restaurant visit and a nighttime walk let us see them somewhere less formal. Those scenes look pleasant, but the change of location only does so much. What we remember is how they behave toward each other. The hand-holding before the flu shot tells us more about their relationship than simply seeing them on a nice evening out.
Watch this for Reinhart’s comedy and Olive’s friendships, not for a romance that gets everything right. There is enough to like for a relaxed movie night, especially if fake-dating stories are already your thing. If you get tired of a love interest who rarely says what he feels, the early scenes with Adam may test your patience. You should not have to bring affection for the book to believe in the couple on screen, and we did not always believe in them.
The Love Hypothesis started streaming on Prime Video on September 23, 2026. Despite the funny setup, it is a film for adults, with sexual material and a harassment storyline. It is worth knowing that before choosing it for family viewing.
Pixel Twelve score: 6.5/10 — Fair. Reinhart makes Olive’s mistakes funny, and her friendships and research give us reasons to keep watching beyond the romance. We enjoyed those parts enough to forgive the unlikely fake-dating plan. Adam is harder to warm to, though, and the serious trouble Olive faces at work is dealt with too quickly. There are sweet moments between the couple, but we left liking Olive more than we believed in their love story.
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