Director Peter Hutchings’s new film The Hating Game has a lot to live up to. Adapted from Sally Thorne’s wildly popular novel of the same name, it has a built-in audience. However, that same audience will also be its harshest critics because those viewers will want to see a movie that exactly matches the characters and plotting they remember from reading. And while it’s impossible to please everyone, The Hating Game is a damn fine rom-com regardless of whether it’s a totally faithful adaptation.
The film stars Lucy Hale as Lucy Hutton and Austin Stowell as Joshua Templeman, rival executive assistants at a publishing company with two very different CEOs at its head. When Lucy and Josh become the top candidates to become the company’s new managing director, their already antagonistic relationship intensifies. However, the more they compete for the job, the more undeniable their sexual tension becomes.
If Lucy and Josh sound like an HR nightmare, the simple fact is they are. While the characters’ sparring could take place internally on the page, Lucy’s occasional voice overs can only take us so far and much of Josh and Lucy’s antagonism–and therefore their chemistry–has to come from their dialogue. While we can suspend our disbelief in scenes where they scream at each other over donuts in the break room thanks to lines from the company’s HR rep about complaints against them, it’s harder to buy moments where their flirting gets more explicit.
After Lucy has a vivid sex dream about Josh, she comes into the office the next day in a short dress in hopes of playing some psychological warfare. If that were all that happened, it would be questionable work behavior if not exactly totally acceptable. Except then Lucy saunters over to Josh’s desk in that little black dress to tell him about her dream. It’s a memorable and admittedly sexy moment, but it’s also a little hard to believe that she would suddenly be so nakedly flirtatious — especially in their open plan office with their respective bosses nearby.
However, while some of The Hating Game‘s choices can strain believability, the hyper-clever dialogue screenwriter Christina Mengert often pulls directly from Thorne’s novel also means the strongest aspect of Josh and Lucy’s chemistry is their banter. Watching them verbally spar in the elevator or tease each other about their very different work attire aesthetics, it’s clear that much as these characters may fight, they’re also obsessed with each other. Indeed, Josh and Lucy so obviously take such perverse joy in fighting that it seems a wonder they took so long to kiss in the first place.
That said, while The Hating Game‘s rat-a-tat dialogue recalls the whip-smart banter of ’30s and ’40s screwballs, it’s also so constant that it can feel overwritten. Josh and Lucy’s chemistry may largely rely on their dialogue, but the film itself can over-rely on it to tell the full story, leaving the characters lacking a degree of internality and making some of their motivations hard to understand. When a scene where it seems all but guaranteed that Lucy and Josh will finally consummate all their sexual tension instead ends with him coldly turning her down, it’s then confusing a few scenes later when–with little but cool silence on Josh’s part in the interim–he suddenly shows up at Lucy’s apartment determined to make her keep her promise to attend his brother’s wedding with him. For those who’ve read Thorne’s novel, Josh’s motivations will likely be crystal clear, but viewers coming to the story solely through the film will be left struggling to understand why Lucy and Josh’s relationship develops in such fits and starts with seemingly little clear motivation for each turn.
However, while book fans will come to the film with a deeper understanding of the relationship dynamics than fresh viewers, it’s likely they’ll also be far less willing to give the film a pass when it deviates from what they expect. The Hating Game has a passionate fanbase and despite everything that works so well in this adaptation, there are also plenty of nits to pick for those looking to do so. Perhaps chief among them is that Stowell’s take on Josh simply isn’t as irritable and unsmiling as the character is on the page. There’s always a knowing smirk to Stowell’s delivery and even at his meanest, there’s a clear undertone of affection in the way Josh speaks to and treats Lucy.
Arguably, those choices are necessary in adapting the character to the screen. Taken at face value, Josh’s behavior (including decorating his apartment based on his obsession with Lucy) would either leave him so abrasive that he’d be both hard to like and hard to believe as a romantic hero or so creepy that he’d seem more likely to turn Patrick Bateman on Lucy than lover. Still, for viewers for whom it’s an unforgivable offense that the film has Lucy initiate the couple’s first kiss rather than Josh, no justification in the world will be enough to satisfy. However, for viewers coming to The Hating Game with an open mind and a desire to see two hot people flirt, the film is easily the best romantic comedy of the year.
