It Ends With Us: Bestseller Adaptation Well Acted, Poorly Executed
By Chris Knight
Rating: B
It Ends With Us has just about everything. That’s not the compliment it might at first seem. Supermarkets have just about everything, but you wouldn’t go to one for a fine dining experience.
The story is based on the wildly popular 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, itself based on the relationship between the author’s mother and father. It’s also about domestic abuse, so any critical review had best tread lightly. And to be clear, the themes are powerful, and the acting — particularly Blake Lively in the staring role — is for the most part excellent.
The problem is the execution. As directed by Justin Baldoni (who also stars as the husband), the film feels lacklustre and slapdash, never doing anything to rise above the basic storytelling beats.
Information is doled out through establishing shots, flashbacks, montages, slow motion and, in one busy moment, an establishing shot to a slow-motion flashback montage.
The score wavers between sad piano music, languorous pop songs and (when it wants to be edgy) no music at all. And the running time, an Oscar-baity two hours and 10 minutes, just allows more time for all these little tics and flourishes to multiply and pile up. To return to the supermarket analogy, that’s too long to spend in one.
Ah, but it is a Very. Slow. Burn. When Lily Bloom (Lively) meets Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) it feels like a classic movie meet-cute, as they spar with words while their bodies get closer and closer, only to be interrupted by a phone call. Ryle, a Boston neurosurgeon, is called away to perform emergency brain surgery.
Not to fear (by which I mean “to fear”) for they will meet again. Lily, true to her name, opens a flower shop, and Allysa (Jenny Slate) stumbles in looking for a job, and Ryle just happens to be her brother. And so, the two meet-cute all over again, and the relationship develops with only the teeny-tiniest of red flags for now.
Of course, fans of the novel (of whom I estimate 60 per cent of a recent promo screening audience was comprised) know better.
Anyway, the film’s lugubrious pace is further slowed by Lily’s backstory. As a teenager, not only did she witness her father hitting her mother, but she got close to a charming, sensitive boy at school whose mother was also regularly beaten by her romantic partners. His name is Atlas Corrigan (you couldn’t make up these names but Hoover seems to have managed it) and he’ll also make an appearance later in the story.
Lily and Atlas are played in their youth by Isabela Ferrer and Alex Neustaedter, inspired casting that started with the cheekbones and went straight into hair and makeup. In fact, “young Lily” looks so much like Lively that I suspected some kind of digital trickery. Was that Tom Hanks in a mo-cap suit, or AI blending like they did to Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa? But nope, near as I can tell they’re just lookalikes, the kind they used to use in the old days.
The film is a throwback in a number of ways. It’s careful not to overstep the bounds of either sex or violence onscreen and has been rated PG in most of Canada and, for reasons unknown, G in Quebec. (It’s somewhat sanitized, but if it’s G-rated then my name is Deadpool.) And if it’s not a typical romantic drama, that is at least what its character aspire to.
So too the audience, who could be heard hissing, sighing and otherwise expressing themselves at my screening. I’m pretty quiet at the movies, but I couldn’t blame them. The audience matters, because you can’t have It Ends With Us without Us.
It Ends With Us. Directed by Justin Baldoni. Starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and Jenny Slate. In theatres August 9.