The Love Hypothesis

Directed by Claire Scanlon
2026, Amazon MGM Studios
1 hour, 52 minutes

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

The Love Hypothesis is one of those movies which is greater than the sum of its parts, in so far that a lot of its essential components are flawed, but they don’t really take away from the overarching romcom experience. That doesn’t mean the movie is good—I find it quite mediocre, as Olive abhors to hear. Things start off strange as the opening is shot like a psychological thriller, a cinematographic style which inexplicably pops up throughout the film for no real reason. It’s as if there was a miscommunication between the cinematographer, the editor and the director on what kind of story The Love Hypothesis is supposed to be. The movie also can’t decide whether it wants to challenge problematic tropes and center feminism in STEM, or romanticize problematic behaviour such as male sexual assault, men taking agency away from women, and white knights. Perhaps less egregiously, some line deliveries feel out-of-place or strange, though it’s difficult to tell if the issue is the script, the actors, or the direction. It all comes together to make a movie which feels different from its progenitors on the surface, but ends up pulling from the same old, tired romcom conventions. In a vaccum, it wouldn’t really matter. The problem is these fictional romantic entanglements end up being aspirational for a lot of people rather than simply entertaining, which I find troubling, to say the least.