If you have a “mom’s night out” in your near future, it’s likely you’ve already made plans to see It Ends With Us, the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s wildly popular novel about friendship, romance, handsome neurosurgeons, a flower shop, and the cyclical, self-fulfilling nature of intimate partner abuse. Oh yeah, it’s got everything that moms love when they finally get a free night to themselves when they can fill a Stanley cup with Franzia and enjoy an evening of well-deserved leisure. I’ll say it right now before I get too deep into this review: This is not the type of movie that I tend to seek out, nor am I even remotely close to being the intended audience. If you are at all like me, you probably won’t get much from this film, but if you’re the intended audience, you’ll find that this is waaaay better than other films of its ilk (I’m looking at you, Hallmark Channel).
But ya know what? Moms are heroes, and heroes deserve movies too!
One of the things that makes films like this one so much more entertaining than they likely have any right to be is that the nature of the beast is one of excessive plot. It Ends With Us is based on a book specifically designed to keep the reader turning pages. And while this doesn’t mean there’s an absence of thematic depth, it does mean that there is plot on plot on plot on plot. As such, it would be a shame for me to spoil the entire story the way that an in-depth review of this movie would require, so instead I’ll give you the setup and let you figure out the rest.
Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom, a driven young woman who has just opened a flower shop in the wake of her father’s untimely death. After refusing to complete her eulogy, we get the sense that Dad wasn’t a very nice guy. And yes, she acknowledges how ridiculous her name is, which is enough to make it work. She soon meets Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directed the film), a handsome, rich neurosurgeon with 437 abs and an unwillingness to be in a relationship. He’s a player, through and through, and yes, he also acknowledges how ridiculous his name is.
Lily’s story cuts back and forth between the present day and her teenage years, a time when she lost her virginity to a young man who, after leaving his home due to, you guessed it, intimate partner abuse, has been living in the abandoned property next door.
That’s about all I should say, but what follows might as well be a television season worth of drama crammed into just over two (admittedly breezy) hours.
Jenny Slate is also there as the funny best friend, and honestly she steals every moment she’s in and I have a big crush on her and that’s that. Her husband is played by Hasan Minhaj who is charming and funny, but I can’t help but feel like he’s gonna say that this movie actually happened to him and then wait for a bout of agreeable applause instead of laughter.
The film has a generally flat look, but still seems a cut above its straight-to-television brethren, largely because of the uncommonly rich color palette (and the superstars contained within). But one doesn’t go see a movie like this looking for cinematic innovation. The fact that it’s a smidge higher than “competent” puts it into a class all its own, at least within the lanes of the genre. There are more needle drops than one can count, including a baffling one that starts as a karaoke scene and then morphs into a “we’re having a great night” montage. The chosen song is Fatboy Slim’s Praise You, which features a single looping lyric and would thus never make for good karaoke. But it suits the ensuing montage, so I guess I’ll just slap the bag, take another gulp of “chillable red,” and ignore such frivolities.
One area where the film ends up excelling is in the depiction of intimate partner abuse. In the handful of instances where Lily is harmed, Baldoni frames it all in such a way that it leaves the viewer in doubt as to what’s really happening. That flailing hand may have indeed been the accident that the arguing couple seems to agree it was. It’s not until later in the movie when Lily starts to recognize the nature of her relationship that these scenes are reframed with more clarity. It’s a clever and effective way of utilizing cinematic language in response to the question that abuse victims are more than tired of hearing: Why do you stay with him?
I found myself moved by this revelation, even if it came at the hands of a film I could otherwise easily dismiss. Sure, the melodrama that fuels this non-stop onslaught of plot can sometimes read a little wonky with its risible dialogue and oddball characterizations, but the film’s message comes through in a novel and digestible way. For all its eyeroll-worthiness, it proves to be one of the more sensitive and progressive explorations of abuse I’ve seen on screen. And when the titular line hits, I’ll admit it, I got a little teary-eyed.
Based on the post-movie hubbub that I overheard on the way out of the theater, it seems that this is a relatively faithful and pleasing adaptation of the novel, and the one mom I spoke with directly kinda sold me on giving it a read sometime. She also pointed out the one main departure from the source material: Apparently the novel portrays the flashbacks via letters that Lily writes to Ellen Degeneres. There’s a quick reference to this in the film — blink and you miss it, really — but such things simply don’t translate to the screen. Also they probably asked Ellen to support the film and she was like “No, I’m a mean person, grrrrrr!”
Directed by Justin Baldoni
Written by Christy Hall, Colleen Hoover
Starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar, Jenny Slate
Rated PG-13, 130 minutes
