Riverdale’s Lili Reinhart does some heavy lifting in Ali Hazelwood’s hit book, but it’s not quite enoughFans of the dearly departed Riverdale – or, moreover, admirers of all the batshit things the CW comic soap could make its bright young actors say with straining sincerity – have long rooted for Lili Reinhart. The Betty Cooper of yore was the best of that talented crop (Charles Melton and Camila Mendes among them) at rising above her subpar surroundings, her impressively expressive eyes able to sell the unsellable with complete conviction. She is the type of helplessly endearing performer suited to roles of naivety who masks surprise steeliness, as in her notable turn in 2019’s Hustlers or, better yet, romcoms, though there remains a dearth of worthy material. (A dual role in 2022’s Look Both Ways, a Netflix homage to Sliding Doors, didn’t cut it.)At least on paper, The Love Hypothesis, a new romcom from Amazon Prime Video, should be that material. The BookTok sensation by neuroscientist turned author Ali Hazelwood presents an ideal Reinhart protagonist: extremely nerdy, in a periodic table way, yet conventionally beautiful, awkward and self-deprecating yet cutting when it counts, the type of sweet-presenting young woman who will shout “fuck” repeatedly in private. Which Reinhart’s Olive Smith, a young biology PhD student at Stanford, winsomely does in the film’s unsettlingly cold open, as a bleary-eyed Olive, blind from expired contacts, freaking out before her grad school interview and then boldly stating her cancer-solving intentions to a brusque, handsome professor in a lab bathroom. Continue reading...