Lily Blossom Bloom (Blake Lively) is a florist (yes, really) who has left her sleepy hometown to make it big in Boston. Having left behind her dark past, including an abusive father, she’s not interested in love. A chance meeting with Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs) changes everything. He’s handsome, charming, successful, and extremely into her. He can’t stop thinking about her. He wants her, and soon she cannot deny her own feelings. But there’s this dark streak in him that’s become increasingly difficult to ignore…
Based on the wildly popular novel by Colleen Hoover that became one of the defining books of TikTok, It Ends With Us had a tough job ahead of it. While the source material is a multi-million best-seller that has legions of devoted followers, more than one critic (myself included) has called out its questionable portrayal of domestic abuse. Hoover’s work is beloved and derided for its blending of high emotional stakes, soap opera plotting, and spicy sex scenes. Putting all of that into a story about a woman trying to escape the cycle of violence quickly revealed Hoover’s limitations as a writer, although millions of readers evidently disagree with me. It’s possible to adapt a bad book into a good film, but it requires a ruthless editorial hand and a willingness to change that which does not work. When It Ends With Us tries to rectify the tonal conflicts of its source material, you can see the glimmer of something, if not brilliant then at least workable. Largely, though, this is a film that cannot escape the confines of its origins.
If you looked at the marketing for this film and thought it was a rom-com, I wouldn’t blame you. The obfuscation of its plot, that of a woman falling into a relationship where her life is at stake, is indicative both of the book’s issues and the film’s inability to overcome them. It wants to be hot and spicy but also have comedic elements (including the ‘funny’ in-laws, played by Hasan Minhaj and Jenny Slate in full Pixar character reaction gif mode.) It wants to examine something heart-wrenching but also have a subplot about a long-lost adolescent love. It’s not impossible to juggle these myriad ideas. Done well, it would reflect the dizzying nature of an abusive relationship, where things can flip from fine to not with the drop of a hat. But here, as with the book, it’s a mosaic of ill-fitting tonal dissonances that make the comedic bits unfunny and the dramatic bits frivolous.
You can see where they’ve tried to fix some of these errors — they were smart enough to leave the ‘letters to Ellen DeGeneres’ structure — but what they’ve replaced them with isn’t much better. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, amidst their cold war with Baldoni, have been eager to let the world know that Reynolds did some rewrites on the balcony scene where Lily and Ryle first meet. Don’t worry, Deadpool, we can tell. The awkward fit of Dollar-Store Marvel banter into this gumbo has your fingerprints all over it.
Lively does herself no favours here either. She’s a perfectly serviceable actress, who can often be very good with the right material, such as the rich lady soapy goodness of A Simple Favor. Here, there are moments where she shines, especially whenever Lily tries to hide her evident fear with a rictus smile. Mostly, however, she flounders, but the material is largely what’s dragging her down. Stripped down to her core, Lily’s entire characterization is one of a barely sketched-out woman with a lot of pain. Things happen to her, but there’s no sense of an internal life beyond that. This is the book’s fault too. Hoover’s heroines are almost always like this (and they’re usually as stupidly named too), more screens for readers to project themselves onto than figures of their own existence. Baldoni does better, largely because the book and screenplay seem far more concerned with the abuser’s emotional arc than his victim’s (another Hoover trademark.) He has the uncanny charm of a troubled man who thinks violence is the answer to everything, even if the conclusion to the entire story is conveniently neat and doesn’t do that arc justice. It’s also a problem that he’s much more interesting to watch than the other guy, Brandon Sklenar, who plays Atlas, Lily’s first love.
One wonders if anyone involved with It Ends With Us, including the author, was truly focused on depicting the domestic abuse with empathy and proportion. Baldoni makes for some good moments where the camera lingers on Lively’s face after she’s been struck and the whole world suddenly changes for us. Such scenes, however, are few and far between, and a lot of this film’s aesthetic leans harder on perfume ad than indie drama (albeit one with more rich people porn.) The film seems more preoccupied with sexy scenes or building a love triangle. Lily’s mother (played by Amy Morton) is largely ignored, meaning the entire theme of abuse being a cycle that engulfs many families is weakened as a result. What was it sacrificed in favour of? This is a 130-minute film and you couldn’t cut out some of the bad banter to make room for such a crucial detail?
It Ends With Us ends up being frivolous because its source material is. It’s part of an industrial complex where a story of abuse is written and marketed as ‘spicy’ and where the author can do colouring book and nail polish tie-in merch. The roots of an honest story are here but misguided decisions smother them at every turn. A book this popular was never going to be allowed the benefits of a free-wheeling adaptation, regardless of how much it would have improved the narrative. But this isn’t about honesty. It’s about a phony product that can sell more copies. And hey, it’s worked, so what do I know…
It Ends With Us is in theatres now.