Warning! This article contains minor SPOILERS for It Ends with Us.
Summary
- It Ends with Us received mixed reviews for its script and performances, but is shaping up to be a success despite criticism.
- The film does not romanticize abuse, handling the dark subject matter in a grounded and shocking way.
- While Lively and Baldoni shine in their performances, the movie is criticized for thin character development and dragging sequences.
The new romantic drama It Ends with Us, starring Blake Lively, has received mixed reviews for its script, performances, and ability or inability to adapt the source material. It Ends with Us is based on the Colleen Hoover book of the same name that has been taking book groups by storm since it was first released in 2016. The script was adapted by Daddio writer Christy Hall, with Jane the Virgin’s Justin Baldoni pulling double duty as director and Lively’s co-star.
Though the film had a strong opening weekend at the box office, reviews for It Ends with Us don’t seem to reflect the audience’s love for it. The Audience Rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a strong 94%, but it holds just 59% on the Tomatometer, suggesting audiences and critics aren’t seeing eye-to-eye. The It Ends with Us book is controversial, so it’s not exactly surprising that the movie isn’t universally beloved. For all its pros and cons, It Ends with Us is shaping up to be a success.
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7
The Significant Events In It Ends With Us Are Lazily Done
It Ends With Us Makes Everything Too Convenient
It Ends with Us follows a woman named Lily Bloom through flashbacks to her high school years and the present day, highlighting a cycle of abuse that she eventually breaks. She has a few important relationships, but how they begin is almost too convenient. In her high school years, Lily’s love interest is a homeless boy named Atlas, whom she just happens to see through her window. It’s later revealed that he just happened to see her through his window at the same time.
Her meeting with Ryle, who becomes her husband, is similarly coincidental. Lily snuck onto the roof of Ryle’s apartment building, despite her not living there, and they have a deep conversation that almost leads to sex after he angrily storms in. A few months later, a woman named Allysa, who hates flowers, stumbles into Lily’s flower shop and gets hired on the spot. Of course, she just so happens to be Ryle’s sister, bringing him back into her life. As Julian Roman from MovieWeb wrote, “The film thrusts the characters together without establishing believable reasons.”
6
It Ends With Us Doesn’t Romanticize Abuse
It Ends With Us Is Dark At Times
One of the biggest positives of It Ends with Us is that it doesn’t romanticize abuse. This is typically what the Colleen Hoover book is accused of, as it often gets marketed as a romance novel, even though it’s a dark, dramatic account of domestic violence. From the release of the It Ends with Us trailer, it was clear they were going in a different direction. CBR reviewer Hannah Rose noted, “Depictions of domestic violence aren’t sensationalized or graphic, yet still read as grounded and shocking.”
It can be hard to portray abuse in this way, as it’s easy for these narratives to become trauma porn. There isn’t so much violence that that’s all the film is about, but it’s not glossed over either. Isabella Soares of Collider pointed out that there was even an improvement in the It Ends with Us movie from the book, as the movie “doesn’t spend time redeeming Ryle from his actions.” Though he’s established as charming, he becomes so awful to Lily that even in his sweetest moments, it’s nearly impossible to see him as a good man.
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5
Sequences Drag On Too Long
It Ends With Us Is Over 2 Hours Long
It Ends with Us clocks in at 2 hours and 10 minutes, which some might consider a bit too long for the story. The book is 384 pages, so there is a lot for the movie to cover, but given how much was taken out when it was adapted for the big screen, some extra minutes could have been shaved. Most of It Ends with Us is spent establishing Lily and Ryle’s relationship. This helps build suspense and keeps audiences on the edge of their seats waiting for the moment Ryle finally snaps.
However, it also makes It Ends with Us drag at some points. The romantic sequences and montages get a bit tiring after a while, and it almost makes viewers want to get to the darker parts. As a consequence, when the film finally gets around to the important domestic abuse scenes, viewers are tired and start checking how much time is left. CBR’s Rose felt some sequences were too long, a feeling likely shared by many audience members and critics.
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4
The Characters In The It Ends With Us Movie Are Too Thin
It Ends With Us Doesn’t Dive Deep Enough Into Its Characters
Unfortunately, even with all that time to develop the characters in It Ends with Us, they still manage to come out too flat by the movie’s end. This is likely due to changes from the It Ends with Us book. There’s only so much that can be conveyed from a third-person point-of-view versus the first-person point-of-view Lily offers in the book. As aforementioned, there’s also the issue with how the characters and their relationships are poorly established.
Naturally, the character It Ends with Us explores most deeply is Lily, as she’s the protagonist and the center of the flashbacks and present-day timeline. As aforementioned, perhaps too much time is spent building Ryle and Lily’s relationship, and once they get together, there’s less time to focus on her as an individual. In The Hollywood Reporter, Lovia Gyarke referred to the characters as “stubbornly thin,” and called out Allysa and Lily’s friendship as particularly underdeveloped.
3
Atlas’ Character Arc Is Limited In The It Ends With Us Movie
Atlas Had A Larger Role In The It Ends With Us Book
Of all the characters in It Ends with Us, Atlas is undoubtedly the most underdeveloped. This is unfortunate given he plays such a major role in the books. The movie tries to give Atlas depth through the flashbacks, but he only appears intermittently in the present day, and his short scenes don’t do enough to give him much of a character outside of being Lily’s first love and savior. With the tropes he fills, the script doesn’t do much to establish his character outside of them.
This makes Atlas feel more like a plot device than a character. It would have been nice to have more of present-day Atlas in the story, but it’s once again asking a lot of It Ends with Us, a movie that already runs a little too long. Soares called adult Atlas’ presence “one-note,” which is a big juxtaposition from the book. Brandon Klenar does the most with the little he’s given, and an adaptation of the sequel, It Starts with Us, could allow him to shine more.
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2
Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni Give Great Performances
Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni Shine In The Leading Roles
Though the script has been the subject of much criticism from reviewers, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s performances are almost universally praised. As the leads, they have to do a lot of the movie’s emotional heavy lifting, and they deliver. It’s one of Lively’s best roles, as she navigates Lily’s conflicting emotions towards her husband when he turns abusive. Lily is initially in denial, which makes everything even more difficult to watch. Lively captures Lily’s journey to acceptance in a heartbreakingly beautiful way.
Baldoni had the hard task of making Ryle lovable at first, but someone who isn’t too sympathetic by the end. It’s understandable how Lily falls for his charm and good looks, and Baldoni nails the shift in his behavior, making it jarring and easy to see why Lily bought his early excuses. Roman compared Baldoni’s portrayal of Ryle to “Jekyll and Hyde.” Soares noted that Baldoni brings just enough depth to Ryle to make viewers see why Lily fell for him, but not too much so that viewers want Lily to stay with him as her mother did.
1
It Ends With Us Doesn’t Highlight The Difficulty Of Leaving An Abusive Relationship
It Ends With Us Doesn’t Spend Enough Time With Lily’s Decision To Leave
It Ends with Us gets its title from Lily breaking the cycle of abuse that started with her parents, telling Ryle she wants a divorce. She sweetly tells her newborn daughter, “It ends with us,” letting her know she’ll never subject her to the abuse she witnessed as a child and dealt with as an adult. Yet, most of the time spent from when Lily leaves Ryle to the end of the movie is short and mostly told through montages and quick scenes to the point where it almost feels rushed and undermines how difficult it is to leave an abusive relationship.
Sarah Hunter Simanson of HuffPost noted that by taking out key conversations with Atlas and Ryle, It Ends with Us “bypasses the hard realities of Lily’s bravery [when] it is imperative for cultural depictions like this to provide hope and also proof that it is possible to escape that cycle.” In his review for The Daily Beast, Nick Shager agreed. He wrote, “By concluding in fairy tale fashion, It Ends with Us utterly undermines its heroine, whose struggle to overcome her plight—aided by an ideal support group—is barely a struggle at all.” The movie’s final moments arguably hurt It Ends with Us the most.
Sources: Rotten Tomatoes, MovieWeb, CBR, Collider, HuffPost, The Daily Beast
It Ends With Us
2.5
Based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel, It Ends With Us is a drama-romance film directed by Justin Baldoni. The film follows a recent college graduate named Lily, who meets a man named Ryle and falls in love with him. However, a traumatic incident compounded with her former high-school sweetheart re-entering her life complicates her plans.
- Director
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Justin Baldoni
- Release Date
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August 9, 2024
- Writers
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Christy Hall
, Colleen Hoover - Cast
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Blake Lively
, Justin Baldoni
, Brandon Sklenar
, Jenny Slate
, Hasan Minhaj - Runtime
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130 Minutes
