This review was made available on August 9, 2024. It Ends With Us is available on Netflix.
It Ends With Us, which is based on Colleen Hoover’s widely read volumes, continues the ignorant approach of not taking a single step towards maturity and broadens my perspective into its depths And the female narrator takes the front In this movie, warmast kindly blooms, A woman whose last name is appropriately “Blossom” comes to life. Flower enthusiasts would therefore find this narrative fascinating to read. The ancient flower sellers also absolve her age-long relationship with a boy, Atlas. As a child, Atlas unlocked the doors of every adventure and rent through her body and they eventually grew extremely close. Her final relationship is establishing a marriage with a gentleman by the name of Ryle, who is not only extremely wealthy but also an ardent womanizer who easily succumbs to fury.
There might be some amusement with such titles to the extent that It Ends With Us is not a more dramatic saga that pushes forth the didactic oddity. The film passes its characters through a flow of a rehearsed romantic – drama role and incessant violence with just enough of the story which means that Zane’s fans will not be disappointed with as much. The lead character seems to cast Blake Lively into an acting character who certainly feels more realistic as it can be such a strong guarded core of Lily. She can act as if she is fantastically misled by her husband’s insistence that they have never been involved in a violent act. In a scene written by Lively’s real-life husband Ryan Reynolds, the actress is all giggles and wry asides; she can be deathly dry, too, as she was in A Simple Favor. (In other words, this film is equally in part an endorsement of Lively as an entrepreneur: her close friend Taylor Swift helped with the music for the soundtrack, and her other close friend Gigi Hadid lent clothes for her character’s dressing.)
But It Ends With Us is not that nuanced depiction of the petty problems a woman has to go through rather this sounds more entertaining.
The film explores the complexities of abusive relationships, especially why women choose to stay in them, through the lenses of codependency and loneliness, but does not go as deep into the richness and depth of the characters’ lives. Instead, it attributes people’s choices and actions to their dramatic events in early childhood which is an overly reductionist view. In essence, ladies and gentlemen, this is more or less a Hallmark/Lifetime/Netflix production only that it has replaced Hallmark’s limited budget with a wider scope as far as the target audience is concerned, less rawness, and an expensive clothing budget. Oh, not forgetting a few lens-flare-soaked sex scenes.
It Ends With Us tells Lily’s story through two timelines. As an adult (Lively), she works as a florist in Boston, has a distant relationship with her overbearing mother, and meets a world-class neurosurgeon Ryle most romantically (with Justin Baldoni, who directed and produced the movie and seems to have some kind of tension with the cast that has resulted in them unfollowing him on social media and ignoring questions about working with him during premieres, Ryle is a member of the cast). Ryle asks her during their first meeting whether she is going to sleep with him. That was not something she liked. However, when she observes him comforting a young girl who lost her life by accident, her heart turns around. That’s because she has an abusive father, and teenage Lily (Isabela Ferrer) is protective of her first love, an unhoused adolescent called Atlas (Alex Neustaedter) who was thrown out by his mother for refusing to tolerate her nasty boyfriend. Flashbacks of their idealized romance in It Ends With Us brings a comparison between the overlapping nature of Atlas and Ryle in terms of their character traits, depictions of Lili’s rural background with Ryle’s affluent penthouse, and the sincere and innocent nature of Lili’s first relationship to her bond with Ryle that is laden with sexual connotations.
Does all of this come to a climax when Lily learns that adult Atlas (Brandon Sklenar, who resembles a mix of Scott Eastwood and Garrett Hedlund with the Mission Impossible Tom Cruise mask stuck on) is also settling in Boston? It does!
As the cycle completes itself, the women’s romantic-drama genre begins with Danielle Steel, goes on to Nicholas Sparks, and now is firmly with Hoover who is in many ways a striking resemblance to the previous authors. A woman torn between two men, one a working-class sap and the other a man born with a silver spoon, the film portrays the life of a woman who fights a daughter with the same tussle of love, and control that her mother had, and one of those men even goes to the extent of building Lily a restaurant, very much amused in the fashion that Noah built a house for Allie in the film the Notebook. But at least The Notebook gave Allie and Noah interest in things besides their relationship. I mean, there were things about them, and about their jobs that did not fit the mold one would expect Noah has a house construction worker but read Walt Whitman instead. The only thing that’s quite severe in It Ends With Us is supposedly the only risk Lily’s multicolored wardrobe of boho frilly skirts, body-fitting dresses, and such an extensive range of Carhartt that one would feel as though Yellowstone was about to begin.
If one were to ask me to critique the characters, I’d say they are all utterly forgettable, paper dolls if you will, aside from Lily and Atlas. No lived experiences or hardship has been portrayed through them as we know that their mothers abused them.
Lily is married to and is romantically involved with Atlas and Ryle, and there is tension between the three. Although the novel wished to be more than what it already was, it resorts to the ‘gamer way’ of reminding the audience about the characters by reiterating the mental and emotional hotpot they are, survivors of violence, abuse, rape, and bullying. Ah, there are some TLC vibes in this film that worked hand-in-hand with some disturbing scenes but was all worth it as there was a message deleted scene to protect and Preserve the Woman’s Narrative. Adding further to her motherly fight movie plot, Atlas and Ryle are portrayed in a manner that cements the timeline, A rather neatly done plot in my opinion Finally It Ends With Us gives an impression of being a feminist-friendly comforting movie that promotes the Betty crockers and cinderellas of the society, were cringe to say the least.
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