'It Ends With Us' movie review: A dark theme gets the breezy romantic treatment

It Ends With Us still

Film: It Ends With Us
Cast: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, Amy Morton, Isabela Ferrer, Alex Neustaedter
Director: Justin Baldoni
Rating: 2.5/5
Runtime: 131 min

This adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel, Produced by and starring Blake Lively, directed by and co-starring Justin Baldoni, is fairly rooted in the source material. The opening sequence has Lily Bloom ( Blake Lively), walking out of her father's funeral without giving the eulogy her grieving mother counted on her for. Despite misgivings, the young lady had driven from Boston to her hometown in Maine for her father's funeral. She obviously has a lot of pent-up resentment that she finds impossible to overcome. She just couldn't list five things she liked about him.

The root of her tension becomes much clearer later when Lily opens her ‘dream' flower shop and falls for Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni), an attractive neurosurgeon, who also happens to be brother to her new assistant Alyssa (Jenny Slate). The director's attempt to initially withhold certain crucial details of the story and bring it out much later in order to heighten the drama, holds him in good stead. What starts out as a straightforward cliched romance, veers off into triangular conflict and eventually shows itself to be a film about ending the cycle of domestic abuse.

Baldoni faithfully reprises the novel's strong points by anchoring the story around Lily's perspective. A lot of runtime and effort is devoted to making us understand how Lily ends up falling in love with Ryle, whose hitherto emotionally crippled behavior turns into a sort of devoted wooing, passion and love. It's only after they are married that certain well-kept secrets tumble out of the closet. The novel and this adaptation, details how coercive abusive partners can become in their efforts to cover-up their abuse. Baldoni's treatment starts off by casting doubt on that very fact and only much later into the story does it become revelatory.

The narrative struggles to find balance in its depiction of romance and the aftermath of toxicity that it hopes to highlight. The screenplay by Christy Hall feels contrived and unable to rise above the routine cliches that it winks at in an effort to score jokes. Lily's and her mother's struggle with abuse is never detailed. Just a few incidents are used to turn the dysfunctional romance into an opening for her childhood lover to enter into the scene. Atlas (Alex Neustaedter as a youth and Brandon Sklenar as an adult) is the only one who knows about this traumatic period in her life. Their teen romance is rather sketchy and his exit from her life at that point is also left hazy. Isabela Ferrer as the young Lily is perfectly cast as she fits perfectly into what one would envisage Lively as a young teen girl, to be.

Other than the fact that the central character chooses to end the cycle of abuse, there's not much development in terms of a lending strong arcs to each character. Even Lily's business success (or not) as a florist is never discussed. The other couple (played by Jenny Slate & Hassan Minhaj) don't have much to do other than crack jokes and be supportive. The narrative prefers to angle itself towards creating a way in for Atlas to enter the scene of conflict and even later after the decision to end the cycle of abuse, the narrative plays on vacuously in an obvious cliched effort to come good on the promise of new love. The performances also remain faithful to that intent.

‘It Ends with Us' is silken and easily slides away from any moral messaging. It's main concerns are giving Blake Lively and the two male leads the dreamboat treatment while making a flippant, easily digestible statement about domestic abuse.