Over the years, Blake Lively has delivered captivating performances in tv and movies that have shot her to superstardom. Films like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and shows like Gossip Girl made her a household name. In 2024, she even appeared in a cameo role as Ladypool in Deadpool and Wolverine and lent her voice in IF. Unfortunately, we also get to see her work in It Ends With Us, the newest film in her filmography that adapts the wildly popular Colleen Hoover novel of the same name.
It Ends With Us follows the story of Lily Bloom (Lively), a young woman who moves to Boston to open her own flower shop. There she meets Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni), a neurosurgeon and bachelor to whom she takes a liking to almost immediately. She also meets Allysa (Jenny Slate), a young woman who just adores her flower shop and the two eventually become best friends. Ryle also happens to be Allysa’s brother, and Lily and Ryle begin a relationship. But, when she encounters old lover Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), things in their relationship begin to unravel.
It’s important that I mention early on that this film deals pretty intensely with domestic violence. Beyond that it comes out of nowhere really if you’re unfamiliar with the book as I am. In fact, the first 45 minutes of the film feel like a pretty straightforward rom-com. But then, as the movie progresses, it dives headfirst into the deep end of these pretty heavy themes. And honestly, I wasn’t a fan of how the film dealt with it.
From what I’ve researched, the book is quite dark at times and intensely describes abuse. Luckily, the film doesn’t portray it that vividly, however I did not like how the film teeters on near victim-blaming Lily while showing Ryle, for most of the movie, to be an understanding and caring partner. It’s jarring given how front and center these topics have been in recent years.
But the real kicker here is in the performances. Aside from Jenny Slate, who singlehandedly carries this film in many instances, most of the performances here felt lackluster and almost soap-opera-esque. Nearly 25 minutes in and Slate breathes life into a film that desperately needed it. She’s incredibly funny, she and Blake Lively work incredibly well together and steals every scene she’s in.
Lively and director/co-star Justin Baldoni, on the other hand, have nearly zero chemistry for a large part of this film. It was clear that Baldoni was out of his depth in trying to direct a film like this and perform in a lead role, something he is incapable of doing to any degree of success in It Ends with Us.Â
However, Lively and Sklenar do actually work really well together. Their storyline, both in flashbacks and in the present, was by far the most interesting and engaging part of the film. I wished we were able to see even more from the young lives of Lily and Atlas.
My biggest issue with It Ends with Us though is in the writing and directing. This movie is entirely too long and a large majority of it is due to strange conversational scenes with really horrible writing and poor direction with far too many dead stares that carry on too long. I was certainly surprised because screenwriter Christy Hall wrote one of my favorite films from this year, Daddio, but here it’s simply a mess. One of my biggest pet peeves in a film is when a conflict would be completely avoidable if the characters just talked to each other. Here, this issue is rampant.
Aside from that, it became clear to me that Baldoni wanted to spend as long as possible portraying his character as “the nice guy” until far too long into the 2-hour-and-10-minute runtime before his character pulls a complete 180 on the audience. It takes until nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes in before we even find out he’s an abuser and that we’ve been seeing him through the eyes of the victim. This could have been much more successful if that turn happens much earlier in the film.
And to make matters worse, the film leans very heavily into the “will she take back her abuser” narrative for far too long. It became sickening at the end.
Final Thoughts
It Ends with Us is the type of movie that, if you’re a fan of the Colleen Hoover novel and know what to expect going in, then you may find some enjoyment in it. For the general audience, there’s just too many issues to warrant it’s viewing. Especially for victims of domestic abuse, of which it could be incredibly triggering. The film edges on the victim-blaming cliff for much more than my liking, even if it doesn’t fully jump off. I think it’s telling on the quality of a film when, after 2 hours of near trauma-porn disguised as a romance, that a serious line of dialogue is met with uproarious laughter from a full theater.
