{"id":30837,"date":"2022-11-04T14:53:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T18:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/?p=30837"},"modified":"2026-09-11T08:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:55:13","slug":"review-the-hating-game-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/review-the-hating-game-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Hating Game’ (2021) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ll be honest: I was a bit so-so on\u00a0The Hating Game, Sally Thorne’s 2016 novel this movie is based on. I won’t go into my thoughts on the book itself – you can read that in the review link above – but I will admit right now that I actually preferred the movie, which almost never <\/em>happens. I will give Thorne her due, though – The Hating Game’s<\/a><\/em> book success helped boost the rom-com genre, which continues to thrive today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in the movie, Lucy hates Josh. Josh hates Lucy. And there is a fine line between love and hate. They’re both up for the same promotion and work to sabotage the other while fighting (for a while) their attraction to one another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with most enemies-to-lovers tropes, Lucy and Josh never entirely hate each other. They dislike<\/em> each other for superficial reasons and probably because they’re annoyed by their attraction. This particular trope lives or dies by the chemistry between the two leads. Thankfully, Lucy Hale<\/strong> and Austin Stowell <\/strong>are quite magnetic together, and their on-screen chemistry carries the otherwise formulaic film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I loved the quick-witted banter between the two, and while The Hating Game<\/em> is more focused on romance than comedy, it also has its share of laugh-out-loud moments. I haven’t seen Lucy Hale<\/a><\/strong> in much, but she was just the right balance of funny, coy, and sexy as Lucy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Austin Stowell<\/a><\/strong> may look like your typical, bland(ish) leading man, but he gives the stoic Josh plenty of depth, which you don’t really get in the novel. I think this may be part of why I enjoyed the movie more than the book – both characters share equal development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You won’t find anything new or surprising in The Hating Game<\/em>, but it’s still sexy and entertaining and definitely worth watching<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watched:<\/strong> 10\/28\/2022
Notable Song<\/strong>: This is How You Fall in Love by Jeremy Zucker & Chelsea Cutler<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating:<\/strong><\/div>
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll be honest: I was a bit so-so on\u00a0The Hating Game, Sally Thorne’s 2016 novel this movie is based on. I won’t go into my thoughts on the book itself – you can read that in the review link above – but I will admit right now that I actually preferred the movie, which almost…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[468,1],"tags":[855,3292,3305,3304,3291,3303,3655,3306,2468],"class_list":["post-30837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews-h","category-reviews","tag-855","tag-austin-stowell","tag-corbin-bernsen","tag-damon-daunno","tag-lucy-hale","tag-peter-hutchings","tag-3-5-stars","tag-sakina-jaffrey","tag-the-hating-game"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30837"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86378,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30837\/revisions\/86378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}