The Hating Game
Fun as a guilty pleasure, but this trash-lit adaptation is rote as they come in the age of streaming services.
Lucy Hutton (Lucy Hale) is an up-and-coming publishing assistant at a respectable firm. On top of that, she is excited by the opportunity presented by the decision of the firms two owners to step back a little; a new managing director role, that Lucy thinks she would be perfect for. There’s only one problem; her nemesis, co-worker, and the fastidious Joshua Templeman (Austin Stowell) who works at the desk across from hers, and who also wants the role. What’s more, is that these two absolutely hate one another. But hate and love have such a fine line dividing them, and as the pressure mounts in the competition for the new gig, the sexual tension between these two co-workers also rises.
Based on the best selling trash-lit novel by Sally Thorne, The Hating Game is about as predictable as cinema comes. Above all else, it feels like the sort of trashy beach reading you’d expect from a cheap airport paperback with a pastel cover. It’s frankly shocking that this is getting a cinema release, particularly in the age of Netflix and Amazon Prime, where the trashy rom-com has thrived as a guilty at-home pleasure.
The key issue with the piece stems from the predictability and the absolute lack of finesse with the dialogue. Hale and Stowell admirably tackle the most ridiculous of lines, but even they can’t stop this from veering closely at times to a script more deserving of a porn website than a cinema screen. It’s some of the most poorly written dialogue of the last few years, and hamstrings an already unbelievable film.
We go through the expected motions with these two blithely and disinterestedly. Of course they hate each other - one’s neat, the other not so much! And of course they don’t really hate each other, but love one another. Obviously, Josh has a wedding he has to attend, but no one to go with, and obviously Lucy gets roped into it. Then of course there’s a misunderstanding that throws a spanner in the works, only to be overcome at the last minute for their happily ever after. We’ve SEEN IT ALL BEFORE GUYS!
Visually, things could be worse. It’s perhaps too brightly lit, but the set decoration is quite nice, and costuming well kept and fashion forward. It’s also not unenjoyable. Yes it is rote and predictable, but we’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t watch this on Netflix a little drunk on a Friday night and have a great time. We just can’t understand why it would be in a cinema.
