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On September 23rd Movie adaptation of bestselling book and “BookTok” sensation The love hypothesis Dropped on Streaming. The premise? We follow the life of grad student Olive Smith, who navigates her life as woman in a STEM research field while she's pretending to be in a fake relationship with a well (hated) known professor at the school at the convenience of both of them who have their respective agendas but end up falling in love in the process. That's my semi spoiler free summary; a classic enemies to lover fake dating trope set in Stanford graduate school. Sounds like something fresh, right? Well, not really.
On the press tour For the Movie Lead Actress Lili Reinhart in collaboration with Stylist Ib Abdel Nasser, Reference a plethora of 2000s Rom coms in Lili's looks. While fun to see and on trend with a trend Zendaya and stylist Law roach among other actresses have been partaking in, called Method dressing, term coined by Vogue writer André Wheeler. Where actresses wear looks that go in unison with the story being told in whichever movie they are promoting in the moment. Sometimes it can be self-referential, or inspired, or like Lili's looks like a reference to something from the past.
Something that goes hand in hand with all the Rom coms we’ve been seeing for the past decade or so, almost every romance film being put out is a reboot of a preexisting movie or a book adaptation of IP. Everything is a reference nowadays. Everything needs to be made with the end goal of maximizing profits, and people are more likely to not watch things these days if it's not part of the scope of things they already know. That's something that can be argued (the recent uprise in audiences' fatigue to these franchise movies and a renaissance of movie theaters in general) But that's for a different article on a different day. What they are looking for it’s something that's going to get thousands upon thousands of clicks and engament on social media due to traditional marketing being one step away from the grave and the most effective way to get to audiences is through their phone. I mean even my article title right now is made to make you click grab your attention, that's why I'm using a popular movie made from a popular book to drive my main point.
Which leads me to BookToK, the main factor for why this movie even got produced in the first place. In the realm of the app of tiktok there are certain communities that adhere to the niche interest of a wide span of people that wouldn't know they have an affinity for the same things if it wasn't for the internet. One of these tabs is Booktok, rapidly rising after the pandemic where people were bored and got back to reading. As of 2026 the hashtag has Over 36 million to 87.7 million total posts globally on the app. The love hypothesis rise to fame came in September of 2021; I was one of the millions of people who subsequentially bought the book ad read it. Just like the love hypothesis in the past there's been 5 and counting book to movie adaptations from books popular on the platform: Varity and reminders of him both by author Coleen Hoover, people we meet on vacation (personal favorite) by author Emily Henry, and The Bodyguard / Guarding Stars by Katherine Center Releasing November 18, without counting the ones that started production and we don’t even know about.
These bestselling books have been the poster child for romcoms of the 2020s. And to dig even deeper, a great majority of these popular books on TikTok are actually published versions of fanfiction written on platforms like Whattpad and AO3, that gain popularity and then get published. The love hypothesis being one of them, the book originally drew its popularity from a Star Wars "Reylo" (Rey and Kylo Ren) fanfiction titled Head Over Feet, which built a massive following between late 2018 and mid-2019. Are these book adaptations so bad if they are just giving a chance to independent artist’s work to be published and popularized? Well, No! That isn't the main problem. When adapting a book to the big screen a lot of key things of the storyline may be cut for the sake of the run time, which is one of the main critiques these book-based movies get, but there’s also the part where audiences are just not being challenged enough.
The reason why romcoms now feel lack luster in comparison to old movies, because they are too show & tell, instead of challenging audiences comprehension skills, they lack substance and the plot is served blatantly and the relationships they present therefore feel hollow. One other problem is that most of these movie make their female lead life completely revolve around their romantic interest, Something that for most of the Rom-Coms in the 90s and 2000s didn’t have an issue the Female lead would have dreams and aspirations, a job a life, before apart from the main love plotline which would give any decisions taken by her a depth, that sometimes is not present in recent movies it feels as if our main characters are moving with no thought process beforehand. One thing I will give to the love Hypothesis is that this is not the case, Olive is a very intelligent and academically successful woman, something that was very present in the book her career always came first. And she also had a motivation for doing what she loved a well thought out back story.
Truth is movie makers are no longer trying to challenge their audiences in the fear of losing engagement as audience's attention spans keep getting smaller and smaller. But maybe romance is also not the same due to the dating landscape not being the same as it was in the early 2000s. People don’t have “meet cutes” like in the movies anymore, it is more likely that a relationship is started form an Instagram DM. IN our now fully optimized digital post pandemic world it is more likely that someone will hop on Tinder or Bumble to find a partner rather than carpooling with a stranger to New York like in “When Harry met Sally” (1989) or while house swapping with someone who lives in a different continent like “The Holiday” (2006). Which leads me to my last critique of the Movie, The love hypothesis has an unbearable, and pretty unrealistic (borderline cringe) portrayal of social media that only helped explain or move a plotline faster in the movie without any witty explanations for the happenings in it.
But what do you think? Are romantic movies eternally doomed like relationships that start with IG DMs?