It Ends With Us: It Never Should Have Started With Them.

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MOVIE INFO:

IT ENDS WITH US, the first Colleen Hoover novel adapted for the big screen, tells the story of Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan, suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future

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REVIEW:

It Ends With Us tries to be a tough movie about spousal violence but gives in to its romantic urgings. 

Blake Lively plays the metaphorically named Lily Blossom indicating her eventual resurrection from the control of a bad father past and worse husband future.  Inbetween she lives with romcom stylings: the good, supportive long ago boyfriend waiting for her to see his true worth (Brandon Sklenar); the wise cracking sidekick (Jenny Slate); her chic little flower boutique that survives on three sales a day; and who in the end, after many plot complications and heartaches, finds herself- and then in true romcom style, finds herself again in the arms of the man she was always meant to love and marry. It’s Hallmark hooey at its worse. At its best, It Ends With Us is a pretend Jennifer Lopez come uppance revenge, payback film without the training scenes and the big good woman done wrong-bad ex boyfriend brawl at the end.

Lively is playing a dream of a woman, living with echoes of Mildred Pierce in the background. Here she rises beyond her abusive father, her loving but acquiescent mother, and her own dark suicidal nihilism.  The movie and the director and costar Justin Baldoni just throws her back into the maelstrom, substituting an artificially charming but moody neurosurgeon with dark hair- a narcissist going through the levels of gaslighting and control.  Apparently, the way back to total self integration is through Lily living and surviving her death wish. She needs to fight death in order to know love. 

The movie is diverting and charming at times but is often overblown and ridiculous, and at least twenty minutes too long.  It’s stuffed with flashbacks that try to create complexity by showing the paralells to the past, and how Lilly is  falling into repeating the same mistakes. It’s just overindulging fluff that fills in the escape valve boyfriend’s romantic credentials.  He’s pretty standard, so five minutes would have been enough.            

 As a man, watching beautiful people suffering beautifully is not my romance thing.  Still, the romance on the side, the escape valve boyfriend subplot sunk its hooks into me.  Lively is the perfect actor for this kind of schmaltz.  Baldoni as a director doesn’t know how to do anything beyond lighting character auras.  He prettifies everything.  The dark, when it comes, is tonally off, and when the light comes back it never readjusted.   It’s more annoying than emotionally deep. It just destroys the slow building momentum of Lively’s scenes by centering her artificial moments. Baldoni doesn’t know how to convey a messy reality.     

It Ends With Us gets a 3.0/5 or a B. 

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CREDITS:

Directed by

Justin Baldoni

Screenplay by

Christy Hall

Based on

It Ends with Us

by Colleen Hoover

Produced by

• Alex Saks
• Jamey Heath
• Christy Hall

Starring

• Blake Lively
• Justin Baldoni
• Jenny Slate
• Hasan Minhaj
• Brandon Sklenar

Cinematography

Barry Peterson

Edited by

• Oona Flaherty
• Robb Sullivan

Music by

• Rob Simonsen
• Duncan Blickenstaff

Production

companies

• Columbia Pictures[1][2][3]
• Wayfarer Studios

Distributed by

Sony Pictures Releasing

Release date

• August 9, 2024

Running time

130 minutes[4]

Country

United States

Language

English

Budget

$25 million

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