Lili Reinhart stars in Amazon Prime adaptation of BookTok hit The Love Hypothesis

Lili Reinhart takes the lead role in The Love Hypothesis, a new romantic comedy streaming on Amazon Prime Video based on Ali Hazelwood's popular BookTok novel. Reinhart plays Olive Smith, a biology PhD student at Stanford University who aims to find a way to detect pancreatic cancer following her mother's death. In the film's opening, a stressed Olive accidentally blurts out her cancer-solving goals to a strict professor in a lab bathroom while dealing with expired contact lenses. Soon after, Olive enters a fake-dating arrangement with Dr Adam Carlsen, played by Tom Bateman, to convince her friend Anh that she does not have feelings for Anh's acquaintance Jeremy. Dr Carlsen agrees to the setup because he needs a fake girlfriend to prove to school administrators that he is staying at Stanford and prevent them from cutting his grant funding. The film follows the pair as they try to convince others of their romance while using scientific terms like controls and variables to discuss their fake relationship. Directed by Claire Scanlon with a screenplay by Sarah Rothschild, the movie features a supporting cast including Rachel Marsh as grad student Anh, Nicholas Duvernay as Jeremy, Arty Froushan as Harvard lab director Dr Tom Benson, and Charles Melton and Camila Mendes among alumni from the television show Riverdale. Despite Reinhart's energetic performance and earnest attempts to carry the thin plot, the movie struggles with a choppy fake-dating narrative, inconsistent tones, and a lack of chemistry between the two leads.