Remember making elephant toothpaste in science class? You’d combine water, yeast, soap, hydrogen peroxide, and food coloring, and watch a tower of colorful foam erupt from a beaker. Not long after, the foam would subside, leaving nothing but soapy water and the fond memories of a brief foray into the world of chemistry.
Watching The Love Hypothesis is a lot like that.
Adapted from Ali Hazelwood’s novel of the same name, a BookTok favorite, The Love Hypothesis details the fake dating romance between biology PhD student Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart) and professor Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman). It’s full of chemistry, both figurative and literal, and like the elephant toothpaste, it’s a bubbly blast that’ll have your insides fizzing. Yet despite this pure fun, not to mention two solid leading performances, The Love Hypothesis is missing one key ingredient that would truly make its experiment stick the landing: yearning.
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