It Ends with Us review

IT ENDS WITH US: 

BLAKE LIVELY ROMANTIC DRAMA IS EFFECTIVE BUT LIKELY POLARIZING! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4 

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Blake Lively in It Ends with Us

 

            Blake Lively (The Age of Adaline, The Shallows, A Simple Favor) and director and co-star Justin Baldoni (Jane the Virgin, Five Feet Apart, Clouds) bring the very first film adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel to the screen in the new romantic drama, It Ends with Us. I should make this clear, I have not read the book this film is based on so I don’t know how faithful it is to the source material nor will I be able to compare the book to the movie. 

            Aside from seeing the trailer once in theaters, this movie kind of slipped my mind until its release date, but I chose to subject myself to Borderlands instead…sadly. Well, since I gave Ryan Reynolds a bunch of love this year with 3 going on 4 viewings of Deadpool & Wolverine in theaters plus a viewing of IF, I decided to give his wife some attention and I was somewhat curious about the movie despite not reading the book. 

            Coming out of it I have to say this movie is…alright! It isn’t a perfect movie and has its share of flaws, but its themes on relationships and abuse are very provocative and handled well and the performances by the cast are very strong. 

            The film follows Lily Bloom (Lively), a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood by moving to Boston to chase a lifelong dream of owning her own business. A chance meeting with a charming neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as the two start to fall in love, Lily begins to see different sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. 

            On top of that, Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (And yes, there were two movies out last weekend that featured a character named Atlas!) (Brandon Sklenar-Vice, Midway (2019), 1923) comes back into her life which turns her relationship with Ryle upside-down and must learn to rely on her strength to make an impossible choice for her future.

            The film also stars Jenny Slate (Bob’s Burgers, Venom, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) as Allysa, Hasan Minhaj (The Spy Who Dumped Me, No Hard Feelings, Tron: Ares) as Marshall, Amy Morton (8mm, Up in the Air, Bluebird) as Jenny Bloom, Kevin McKidd (Trainspotting 1 and 2, Dog Soldiers, Brave) as Andrew Bloom, Newcomer Isabela Ferrer as Young Lily, and Alex Neustaedter (Colony, A.X.L., American Rust) as Young Atlas. 

            Overall, It Ends with Us will likely be a very polarizing movie in terms of its melodrama and heavy themes it covers (Even I’m still not fully sure what I thought of the film entirely), but these are very important issues in a relationship to address and the film handles them well for the most part. I probably should have rewatched the trailer again prior to seeing it to have the right mindset for the movie because at first glance you’d probably expect it to be in the same boat as Anyone But You or Fly Me to the Moon, but it’s nothing like that at all. 

            This is less of a romance and more of a cautionary tale on abusive relationships and gaining the courage to act when it goes sour. Despite the film being rated PG-13, it gets intense and there are a fair amount of scenes revolving around the leads that are genuinely shocking. 

            Most of its subject matter is done well and is very effective, but admittedly there are times where it feels like you’re watching a big-budget soap opera in terms of how certain scenes are directed. To be fair, this is a very difficult story to sell to a mainstream audience (Unless it’s garbage like the Fifty Shades movies) so I understand the approach with how the film is presented. 

            Blake Lively is probably a more well-known star and likely the person who will get tickets sold for this, but I want to talk about Justin Baldoni first. I’m no expert on his acting credits and the only other directing effort from him I’ve seen was Clouds, but he does a great job as Ryle and shifting from charming and caring to creepy and violent while also being an interesting and fleshed-out character so he’s not just the abusive dick that Blake Lively needs to get away from and the resolution both characters have at the end is pretty refreshing for a film like this. 

            Blake Lively is always a pleasure to watch and here she’s pretty much the emotional anchor of the film as this woman with a rough past and is becoming the thing she vowed never to turn into, a victim of abuse. She plays the part extremely well and while it may not be as iconic to me as her manic performance from A Simple Favor (Which is easily my favorite role of hers), I can tell this performance had a lot of significance to her and that she wanted to deliver the best damn performance she could. 

            One aspect of the film I’m very split about is its usage of flashbacks that depict young Lily and young Atlas which to be fair are very important to the story and for setting up the love-triangle between the three characters. But there are times where the flashbacks halt the pacing of the film which might be because it’s based on a book and the screenwriter is trying to work in as much from the book as possible and certain book aspects don’t always translate well to the screen (Again, I haven’t read it so I don’t know). 

            It Ends with Us probably won’t be the game-changing movie about escaping abusive relationships as there are some issues with its pacing and plot structure, but the subject matter it explores is very thought-provoking and should be looked into even further in future works. The film itself is a mixed bag for me, but the performances and its handling of heavy themes outweigh a lot of the clichés and shortcomings.