It Ends with Us has all the ingredients for success but, unfortunately, director Justin Baldoni can't consolidate them into a coherent whole. Adapted from the wildly popular Colleen Hoover novel of the same name by screenwriter Christy Hall, and with the talented Blake Lively in the lead, the film has the potential to rise above the standard romance genre. Unfortunately, rather than delving into a deeply affecting experience about domestic abuse and female empowerment, It Ends with Us is an uneven film that's all over the place tonally and thematically, never giving its topic any serious consideration.
The film follows Lily Bloom (Lively), a woman coming to terms with childhood trauma. She strives to flourish and realize her dream of owning a flower shop (cue plenty of flora jokes across the film). She's spunky and independent, but nevertheless falls in love with a neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni pulling double duty as director and lead actor). But abusive behaviours emerge in their relationship and, along with the sudden reappearance of her first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), Lily now must find the strength to fight her inner demons.
The premise has the makings of a rich character study or an inspiring tale of courage, but the film is so mired in melodrama that it can't muster enough strength to even hint at its potential. Visual banalities like the penetrating gaze between the lovers overwhelm the film, while every cliché, predictable scenario and character trope found in every romantic tale is used, including the requisite tidy coincidences that keeps characters running into each other, which often gets to the point of silliness.
Mostly these sequences revolve around Ryle's sister Allysa (Jenny Slate), who simply wanders into Lily's store one scene and gets a job with her. Although Allyssa's entry into the film is abrupt, and she's slightly irritating at first, she becomes one of the most truly authentic and warm characters in the film. She and her husband (played by Hasan Minhaj) provide a fun environment and loving atmosphere, contrasting the intense central couple and allow for an odd left turn into music video-style visuals when they sing karaoke to Fatboy Slim's "Praise You." Baldoni doesn't do anything stylistically similar again, and it becomes another example of the film leading viewers from one tone into another without warning or explanation.
As the dynamics of Lily and Ryle shift, and even when the cast expands in an interesting way, their relationship evolves in a jarring manner. Deeper insights into the characters don't have a chance to really take hold and develop beyond the surface. The audience is left with sudden and extreme swings of emotion that explode without the necessary buildup, rendering those moments too shocking to be effective. To really highlight just how uneven the film's tone, during the climactic fight scene between Ryle and Atlas, laughter was the chosen emotion at my screening — which I have to assume was not the desired effect.
Lively does her best to dig deep in her performance under the circumstances but isn't given much to work with, even with so much going on in the film — her past trauma, her current intense relationships, and even her attempts at self-actualization. Instead, Lily is shown as either in love or questioning that love, with the camera constantly roving over beautiful landscapes or charming interiors in between these phases.
These severe tonal shifts in It Ends with Us result in a film with serious subject matter that's under-served and under-developed. Such a light touch is used to gloss over these heavy situations, we don't ever see the real ramifications for the characters, especially not internally, as the material seems to suggest — they mostly walk around like spectres.
To simply dabble in themes of domestic violence in the manner this film displays is inappropriate and disrespectful to the harsh reality many in abusive relationships experience. A more thoughtful approach would have the film explore the subtlety and nuance of the subject matter, and could have also produced a poignant accounting of intergenerational trauma. But this is risky material in the wrong hands — hands that don't seem to understand that trauma is not a plot device to dangle around in order to amp up the drama.