Aarcflick

 The worst thing about The Hating Game's film adaptation of Sally Thorne's 2016 novel is that it almost achieves the magic, as obscene as it is heartwarming, that makes the original work so beloved. But "almost" isn't "quite," and the film versions of office assistants Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman, played by Lucy Hale and Austin Stowell, respectively, fall short. (In Lucy's case, literally, ha ha ha.) I'd better tell you right off the bat that this book is one of my favorite rom-coms, so I was always going to be a little ~harsh~ with my review. And the movie, which premiered in December 2021, isn't great. It's fine. Fine in the sense that if I were flipping channels 10 years from now and saw it at 2 p.m. on TBS, would I stop and watch it? Probably! But oh well, such a huge opportunity was missed, which seems to be mostly due to a lack of chemistry between the two leads, a watered-down story, and, finally, budget (some scenes worthy of...