"the chemistry between Reinhart and Marsh as Olive and Anh is definitely friendship goals"

Romantic comedies are a genre I unashamedly like. Sure, they’re formulaic and you can generally see where they’re going from the outset. That isn’t entirely the case for Lili Reinhart’s latest offering, The Love Hypothesis, directed by Claire Scanlon.

I’ll get to Claire shortly, but Lili is an incredible lead. I don’t think she gets the credit she deserves because she effortlessly switches between genres. Sure, by the end Riverdale had so much going on and more twists than a Rubik’s Cube, but Lili committed — and that’s exactly what she does here as Olive.

Based on Ali Hazelwood’s book of the same name, under the keen direction of the aforementioned Claire Scanlon, The Love Hypothesis follows biology Ph.D. candidate Olive (Reinhart), who enters into a fake dating arrangement with strict young professor Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman).

It all begins because Olive wants to convince her best friend Anh (Rachel Marsh) that she’s moved on from Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay), a guy she had an unrequited crush on, so that Anh can pursue a relationship with him. Olive kisses the first guy she sees — Carlsen — to perpetuate the ruse.

So, a liar-reveal story is what I thought.

Having not read the book, I thought I knew exactly where it was going. I won’t spoil where it actually goes, but it is rather satisfying, and I think having a director of Claire Scanlon’s Emmy Award-winning calibre was the right way to go. Her eye for this story is particularly evident during the film’s steamy scene, which could easily have become voyeuristic under a less thoughtful gaze.

The chemistry between Reinhart and Marsh as Olive and Anh is definitely friendship goals. You instantly believe there’s history between them, with the ride-or-die mentality they portray on screen. I wasn’t familiar with Marsh before this, but she’s become one to watch for me.

All in all, The Love Hypothesis is an excellent film that goes somewhere I wasn’t expecting. I’d recommend checking this one out because it ultimately has more to say than the typical A-to-B rom-com.