It Ends with Us
After having left her father’s funeral up in Maine after failing to deliver the eulogy her mother Jenny (Amy Morton, "Up in the Air") hoped for, Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) is being introspective on a Boston rooftop when she’s joined by a tall, dark stranger who takes out his aggressions on a chair. Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, TV's 'Jane the Virgin') stops when he realizes he has company, and when Jenny won’t get down from the edge where she sits, making him nervous, he joins her. They share a conversation of ‘naked truths’ but their ensuing romance will rely on coincidence in “It Ends with Us.”
Laura's Review: C-
After showing so much promise with her own film “Daddio,” Christy Hall cannot elevate Colleen Hoover’s misguided stab at a Nancy Meyer-esque beautiful people love triangle crossed with a generational domestic abuse drama. As directed by its star, Justin Baldoni, absolutely everything is telegraphed well in advance except for a couple of events too hard to believe. Blake Lively is good enough to keep us invested in a lazy-afternoon-cable kind of way, but there are just too many things wrong here, including her schizophrenic costume design which finds her in sequins and sparkles with one man and barn jackets and overalls with another.
After Ryle, the handsome neurosurgeon, tells Lily that love isn’t for him but lust is pretty nice, she admits to having the middle name Blossom and the dream of opening a flower shop. And that’s just what she does. On her first day of beginning to clear out the vintage shop she’s acquired, in walks Allysa (Jenny Slate), a woman done up in flashy expensive clothing carrying an obviously pricey bag, asking about the Help Wanted sign in Lily’s window. After Alyssa confesses that she ‘hates flowers,’ she sets her precious bag down and begins to work. You’ve got to be kidding me. And when Alyssa and her wealthy husband Marshall (Hasan Minhaj) invite Lily out for some fun, Alyssa brings her brother, who just happens to be Ryle.
Meanwhile we’re treated to flashbacks beginning in the Maine bedroom Lily just revisited where a carved wooden heart held obvious meaning (‘He really loved you,’ says her mother. ‘Who?’ asks Lily, obviously referring to what she’s holding. ‘Your father.’) This would be the reenactment of one of those ‘naked truths,’ Lily having told Ryle she lost her virginity to a homeless man as a teenager. Teenaged Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter in flashbacks) had taken up residence in the boarded up building next to Mayor Bloom’s (Kevin McKidd, "Trainspotting") house and when Lily (Isabela Ferrer in flashbacks) sees him taking half a sandwich out of the garbage, she creates a care package. Love blooms on the school bus, but Atlas must be hidden from dad, who’s revealed to be a violently abusive spouse. And Atlas was thrown out of the house by his mom because he tried to interfere with her abusive boyfriends with a scar on his hand to show for it, something that makes him particularly sensitive to abused women.
Which means that years later, he will reappear to wait on a table at Boston’s hottest new restaurant (even though later we will learn Atlas is actually Root’s chef/owner) holding Ryle, Lily, Alyssa and Mitchell right after Lily received a black eye from what she believes was an ‘unfortunate accident.’ Atlas is also now played by Brandon Sklenar, who looks nothing like Neustaedter and has developed what sounds vaguely like an Irish accent.
Domestic abuse is a serious issue and while the film does do a good job of presenting a victim’s rationalization, the reason behind Ryle’s repressed rage doesn’t really add up. Ryle is one strange character, but then again both he and Atlas are sheer female fantasy – the handsome neurosurgeon who ‘goes through women like candy’ until he’s suddenly so smitten he proposes versus the perfect guy who waits around for years pining just in case the object of his affection becomes free.
Cinematographer Barry Peterson ("Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves") makes everything look pretty, New York standing in for Boston, represented here with several cityscape drone shots, and Plainfield, NJ, standing in for the fictional Plethora, Maine. In “It Ends with Us,” terrible secrets are concealed in beautiful surroundings, but serious issues shouldn’t be addressed in soapy fantasy.
Sony releases "It Ends with Us" in theaters on 8/9/24.
