It Ends With Us

Grade: B-

It Ends With Us is one of those heightened romantic dramas with a plot that has to rely on incredible coincidences. It’s also wearing horse blinders. Everything that happens seems to involve only the handful of characters we meet. There’s a love triangle. We’re expected to believe that our leading lady’s entire dating possibilities are limited to just these two guys. This is a HEAVY film with a rich, eventful story. It will leave you drowning in a pool of things to process and unpack. You will have to jump a few hurdles, but by the end, there is more to like than dislike – and I was sold on it.

I’ll give it this: even at 2 hours and 10 minutes, I don’t remember any fluff or filler. It doesn’t take a break for a tedious montage, or the like. It’s always marching forward, and if you leave to visit the restroom for a couple minutes, chances are you’ll miss a new piece of information. I enjoyed many of its twists and turns. There’s no obvious villain. Everyone does something wrong here, and – like Breaking Bad – had me rooting for different people at different times.

Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds are…I was going to say competing with each other at the box office right now, but come on. We know which one is winning. I liked It Ends With Us better than Deadpool & Wolverine. Director Justin Baldoni films the city skyline beautifully. Even before knowing where it’s set, I thought “that looks like a cool and wonderful place to live.” It’s Boston. Lively plays Lily. Her father has just died. He was a man as complicated as their relationship with each other. Lily has very conflicting feelings.

She has a Meet Cute with Ryle (director Baldoni) on the roof of a tall apartment building downtown. They have both gone up there to decompress. They hit it off, the conversation gets surprisingly deep, but just before any physical activity might start happening, Ryle is called back in to work at the hospital (he’s a neurosurgeon). They don’t see one another again for a little while.

Lily has had a lifetime ambition of opening up a flower shop. She does that. She hires an assistant, Allysa (Jenny Slate – the voice of Marcel in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), who becomes her best friend. Lo and behold, Ryle is Allysa’s brother! Lily and Ryle pick up where they left off and begin dating. When they go out to eat at a nice restaurant, the owner/head waiter just so happens to be Atlas – Lily’s first serious boyfriend, who was given her virginity when they were teenagers. He’s single and still looks great. We get to know young Atlas through an ongoing series of flashbacks.

The movie has “based on a romance novel” written all over it. There’s a scene where Lily serendipitously sees one of her men on a crowded sidewalk. They’re standing about 10 feet apart, and the extras seem to know they’re extras, because they’re walking by like “Don’t mind us. We’re just passing through and supporting your Main Character Syndrome.” We also have the PG-13 love scene where preliminary activity is taking place on the bed, then the camera pans up above them, and we get a time lapse effect through the windows, as night becomes day in about 10 seconds. Another time, there’s a misunderstanding followed by a frustrating Idiot Plot moment – where a couple simple sentences would clear everything up, but it’s never said. Conversely, dialogue is handled much better in a late scene with a speech that provides perfect, satisfying vindication. I think you’ll know the one. Christy Hall (writer/director of the recent Daddio, the Dakota Johnson/Sean Penn two-hander) adapted Colleen Hoover’s book into a screenplay. It makes sense; I could feel her stamp on it.

In the end, the tropes and cliches don’t overcome the movie. The positive things about it emerge dominantly. Every character, ultimately, deep down inside, has a good head on their shoulders, and wants to do the right thing. The film (and, I imagine, the book) puts forth some solid morals and values. When we find out what the title phrase really means, it’s touching, and not at all anything I would have anticipated.

Grade: B-