‘It Ends with Us’ review: Blake Lively’s love blooms toxic and trite

The best-selling romance novel It Ends with Us becomes a shallow romantic thriller that only barely competes with a Lifetime Original Movie.

It Ends With Us is a film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2019 best-selling novel. So best-selling, in fact, that its 2022 sequel, It Starts with Us, is still Simon & Schuster’s most pre-ordered book of all time. If you are a fan of Hoover’s novels, then this film is a must see. For moviegoers not in the know, it will be a horror show. 

This largely faithful adaptation stars A Simple Favor’s Blake Lively as the heroine Lily Blossom Bloom, arriving at her childhood home to give the eulogy at her father’s funeral. Though it’s only a mild distraction before returning to Boston to fulfill her dream of opening a flower shop in the Back Bay. Upon arrival, she takes a breather on the roof before Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs), a neurosurgeon, literally bursts upon the scene disrupting her reverie. The two hit it off, but their courtship takes a while to take off because of Ryle’s inability to open up. After the two finally commit, they cross paths with Lily’s first love Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), which exposes the flaws in their relationship and forces Lily to confront her childhood trauma.

Tale as old as time.

All the characters in It Ends With Us act as if they existed in stasis before the story starts. Prepare to suspend disbelief for huge swaths of the movie, otherwise you may find yourself asking how a woman can afford a flower shop with no customers and have no friends or history outside of her childhood flashbacks and the people on screen. Heterosexual men will go to see Lively be sexy on screen, and the book’s fans will go to fantasize being Lively as she toggles between dressing like an effortless hippie chick in one scene to a cosmopolitan cool girl the next. If pressed to describe Lily, she’s a beautiful person who loves futzing with beautiful things and talking to beautiful people without being shallow because she is receptive, soft-spoken, and caring to everyone who crosses her path whether or not it’s a good idea.

Cut to the tall dark stranger Ryle. The biggest controversy of It Ends With Us is the casting, because all the characters are older than their novel counterparts. Hoover explains that everyone is aged up because neurosurgeons cannot be twentysomething hotties, which is true for everyone after Doogie Howser M.D. Outside of the movies, if a guy led with his desire to hit it and quit it and an inability to have serious relationships, anyone like Lily looking for a commitment would go running. But the two enjoy teasing each other: When she tells him that she’s not looking for empty, meaningless sex, he tempts her with a strip tease showing off his six pack. That leads to Lily upping the ante with her own burlesque show for one. Sorry there’s no nudity, but plenty of skin and chemistry.

The adult courtship comes with flashbacks to her more innocent meeting of two lost souls as a teen girl with Atlas. It’s the classic “uptown girl meets penniless boy” schtick. These flashbacks are the bedrock that anchor the entire story. Ryle is competing with the memory of a perfect guy who relates to Lily’s behind-closed-doors unstable family life and is her undeniable soulmate if circumstances were different. Her father is a well-respected, prosperous member of the community who also has a darker side. So when Lily sees some similar warning signs with Ryle, she has to ask herself if she’s overreacting. Especially when she bumps into Atlas, who notices the same parallels and has a dog in the fight since he’s still smitten with Lily.

Red flags.

Apparently the reason that Hoover’s work is so popular is because she’s not afraid to get into the shadowy side of romance and tackle/condemn issues such as domestic violence in her novels. While It Ends With Us does the same, it is possible that people may misread the situation or rationalize abusive behavior. Christy Hall, who made her directorial debut earlier this year with Daddio, adapted the novel by romanticizing encounters after abuse. It’s as if getting back together would be worth giving a second chance, instead of having third parties present during these exchanges to diffuse the romantic overtones as Hoover did in the book. 

It Ends With Us will appall anyone familiar with real-life domestic violence and unfamiliar with the source material. Even if it’s not the intention, the narrative falls all over itself to make Ryle still seem like the perfect guy and excuse his behavior. Ryle is understandably angry that Lily keeps hiding secrets about Atlas from him and possibly cheating on him. He also has his own childhood secret, which doesn’t reveal itself until near the denouement and explains away his first red flag. The audience is smarter than the material and hopefully won’t root for Ryle, but there’s more room for error. The fallout for Lily is so placid that it should come with a warning label that physical and psychological injury may be larger than they appear, even if the fans are there for Atlas being the underwritten turtle in this race for Lily’s heart.

It Ends With Us is Baldoni’s third feature and while the film could use a shorter run time, he makes the spectacle lush and lustful while keeping that PG-13 rating. Lily describes herself as an unreliable narrator, and Baldoni does an effective job of showing Ryle’s conduct through her eyes and depicting how she sees his behavior before reinterpreting it as she admits the truth to herself when it’s undeniable. Because of the rating, the abuse is mostly implied with an edit before impact, so it’s never graphic and the scars aren’t glaring. It’s very tasteful and decorous because it’s still a romantic drama, which will be disturbing for anyone not into this genre or have not seen a selection for a long time. Remember when the onscreen drama wasn’t rooted in physical violence?

The bottom line.

Should you just stay home and watch Lifetime? Not if Hoover or Lively are your jam. The production quality and cast are undeniably level to their television counterparts, though the plot twists give it a soap opera quality. Lily’s best friend/employee, Allysa (Jenny Slate), happens to be Ryle’s sister and swanky neighbor along with her husband Marshall (Hasan Minhaj), a down-to-earth wealthy guy and Ryle’s drinking buddy. In a perfect world, comedic relief Allysa would be the protagonist, and Lily would be the best friend that she adopted. Her character gets the best outfits and lines. Think of her as a nice, sober Karen from Will & Grace. Sadly, It Ends With Us is not here for anything more than superficial images of female friendship, and love triangles in an adult afterschool special that encourages women to break toxic cycles of abuse. 

It Ends with Us is now playing in theaters everywhere. You can watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures. You can read more reviews by Sarah G. Vincent here.