It’s Valentine’s Day and love is in the air! Just maybe not between Blake Lively and director and co-star Justin Baldoni.
I really wanted to do a Valentine’s Day movie review and there just happens to be a ton of new romance movies out right now, ranging from horror like Heart Eyes and Companions, to romantic comedies like You’re Cordially Invited with Will Farrell and Reese Witherspoon.
Or Kinda Pregnant starring Amy Schumer, who I genuinely dislike. However, she was funny here, mainly due to the numerous comedic prat falls. Pregnant lady falling down equals funny, who knew!
I even watched We Live in Time, the new Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh romance cancer movie. Which might have ended up on my worst list if I had seen it sooner.
But nothing really compared to It Ends with Us and I don’t mean that in a good way either. I wanted to tackle this movie mainly due to the controversy surrounding the behind-the-scenes drama between the two leads.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the drama, I’ll try my best to explain it or at least how I understand it to be. This is a situation where a lot of people are now taking sides, so it’s hard to get the truth and not just someone’s slanted opinion.
Before the drama, I think talking about the movie first might be required to get the full picture. I know a lot of what is going on has only to do with the behind-the-scenes stuff, however knowing what was going on during filming I think changes your perspective on the movie.
With all this drama, I don’t think anyone is actually talking about the movie. Was it any good? Well, no, it was pretty bad either due to the bad writing or our two leads with how weird and awkward she looks around her co-star Justin Baldoni.
Kind of an important thing when you’re trying to convince the audience this character would fall for this man when she looks ready to cringe at his every touch.
This was written by the author of the book this is based off of, which usually doesn’t go well. The movie feels like a Nicholas Sparks knockoff. I wouldn’t be surprised if the novel to It Ends with Us is like Fifty Shades of Grey, where it was just fan fiction, rewritten to be something else.
This movie easily could be The Notebook rewritten to be its own thing, but if the other relationship was somehow abusive.
So, about that…
The film is about abuse and the cycle of abuse; however, the way it was portrayed here is unusual I found. It kind of comes across like Blake Lively’s character is the problem, not the husband.
Let me explain.
When the two leads first meet in the film, Blake Lively’s character Lily is just randomly hanging out on this apartment building’s roof. She doesn’t live there, she just finds herself there after attending her dead abusive father’s funeral.
This is where she meets her future husband Ryle, played by Justin Baldoni. This out of all their interactions is the most cringe worthy. The writing is especially bad here, but it was how these two interact that really caught my eye. Like two NPC’s talking to one another.
Blake Lively is extremely weird during this whole scene, which leads me to think maybe this was filmed later on during her complaints with the studio.
Blake Lively claims to feel very uncomfortable around him, especially during scenes involving kissing or even touching. Stating how he liked to linger on the kiss and putting his hands on her that creeped her out.
She took her complaints to the studio (I think), and they reprimanded the director (I think). A lot of the drama comes from what he allegedly did afterwards to get back at her, by hiring a PR team to try and cancel her (I think).
But I want to point something out involving the movie. Like I mentioned, these two characters first meeting is very awkward, as he comes rushing on to the roof, angrily tossing some chairs around. We never do find out why he is having this violent outburst either.
He gives her a reason, but we later find out that reason was bullshit, so who knows what brought this on.
The two have an awkward exchange, I hate to keep using the word “awkward” to describe this meetcute but I don’t know how else to put it.
During this conversation they have, Lily, Blake Lively’s character tells him and the audience that she is an unreliable narrator.
Essentially telling us, the audience that nothing in her point of view can be trusted. Kind of a major issue if the crux of your film relies on her perspective of being in an abusive relationship.
And that brings me to how they show the abuse. There’s how the film shows us, which seem like unfortunate accidents, to how Lily eventually starts to see things, completely changing how we saw scenes play out.
What are we to believe, the self-proclaimed unreliable narrator or how the things were shown?
Clearly the film wants you to be on her side, but it really doesn’t play out that way. God, talk about life imitating art.
Periodically, we will flashback to when Lily was in high school and had a crush on this boy Atlas squatting in the abandoned house across the street. He ran away from home because his mom wouldn’t stop dating deadbeats that hit her.
Coincidentally, Lily too is dealing with an abusive parent as her father beats her mom but later on almost beats Atlas half to death when he catches them in bed together.
This is actually the part in the movie I liked, the flashbacks to Lily as a teen and her relationship with this homeless kid.
They don’t spend a ton of time on it though, a majority of the film is Lily and Ryle’s relationship or talking about flowers. Lily wants to open up her own flower shop and they spend so much time on it, with I want to say 2 montages.
Then she gets an annoying as hell assistant, played by an actress I usually enjoy, Jenny Slate. She was hilarious on Parks and Recreation but here I wanted to skip any scene she popped up in.
Her character just happens to be the sister of the Ryle character, so unfortunately, she sticks around well past her welcome.
This is also how Ryle and Lily reconnect after parting ways on the roof top.
The two don’t start dating immediately, as they play the flirting game. He’s the pretty boy surgeon that can get anyone he wants, so she has to have him beg for it before she gives anything up.
That’s another thing I wanted to bring up, you don’t look like how this guy looks and not grow up with a sense of entitlement. If you watch the BTS stuff he leaked, it just feels like two really weird people who have weird boundaries.
This is all conjecture, Blake Lively might have this weird boundary because of celebrity, and he might have it because he knows how he looks. Guys that look like that, never get the cue. It is very clear when watching the footage, he himself released, that Blake Lively is very uncomfortable around him and really does not want him to touch her.
I see it, people with any kind of social awareness see that, but he for some reason does not. The guy is just clueless with that she is trying to tell him, without telling him.
Maybe that is where Blake Lively screwed up. Maybe she should have stopped the scene and spoken up. She’s the producer on the film; she has every right to bring this up to him as his boss. But she never does.
As a woman I’m guessing she’s had to deal with actors or just men in general with hurt egos. And how easily it is to hurt a man with a big ego, which try looking like how he does and not have an ego.
It’s kind of like how hot girls are never funny because they never had to be, same with dudes and social awareness.
Forgot how uncomfortable she is, he as a director, has an actor telling him they have an issue with how a scene is going. As the director that should be something you listen to. That’s the moment you cut and reassess things, like talking with the actor.
Eventually Lily and Ryle start dating. He takes notice of the strange tattoo of a heart on her collarbone. She tells him it was just something dumb she got as a teen, but in reality, it has to do with her memory of Atlas, the boy that got away.
As things between her and Ryle get more serious, she introduces him to her mom, going to a new fancy restaurant that has just opened up.
While there, Atlas, Lily’s long-lost love waits on them, taking their order, acting as a waiter. They instantly recognized one another but do the catching up away from the table so her mom and new love Ryle don’t overhear.
This is kind of another moment that stuck out to me. Not only is Lily lying to her boyfriend about the meaning of her tattoo, but she’s now sneaking off to have secret conversations with her ex.
I’d be kind of pissed as well. Ryle takes it way too far, but his suspicions aren’t unfounded.
Time to get into the abuse!
The first sign of it happens when Ryle is cooking breakfast for Lily, but he’s doing a really bad job at it, burning whatever it was in the oven. Like a moron he grabs the hot metal pan with his bare hands, dropping it, breaking some glass that gets stuck in his palm.
Trying to help him, he accidentally elbows Lily in the eye. We very clearly see it was just an accident, however in flashbacks in her head, trying to replay this moment, he very clearly smacks her.
Whatever actually happened, it left her with a black eye, which Atlas instantly freaks out over, getting into a fight with Ryle at the restaurant.
Instead of maybe rethinking her relationship with Ryle, she instead marries him.
Atlas shows up at her flower shop and gives her his number, which he hides in her phone cover. The two go their separate ways and that’s the end of it.
That is until Ryle drops her phone and sees the hidden note from Atlas. And now we get abuse moment number 2!
Ryle runs out of the room and Lily follows him, trying to stop him from leaving, results in her very clearly slipping and falling down the stairs.
Of course we get another flashback of that moment, replaying it in her head and he pushed her.
Those two moments to me are very questionable. However, the third abuse moment isn’t, or it is mainly because of how they filmed it, and I wasn’t exactly sure what I was even seeing or what he was even doing.
But after Lily fell down some stairs, things seem to get better between the two. That is until Atlas gets an article in the paper about his restaurant along with Lily’s flower shop.
In his article, he mentions how Lily was his inspiration and how much he is still in love with her. Okay now, like they met in high school as teenagers. I don’t know how long they were together, but it really couldn’t have been that long.
And the movie makes it seem like he has never been with a single woman ever since.
I’d say these two were a couple for two weeks, maybe a month at best. And this dude is still hung up on her? Especially since the last time he saw her, her dad was beating him up. Oh no, the last time he saw her she was married! And the dude is still fixated on her.
Ryle of course confronts her about this, demanding to know if she still loves Atlas, which she still clearly does, but it comes off less like a romantic love and more like siblings.
Then he confronts her about the tattoo, wanting to bite it off. I honestly didn’t know what was happening during this scene. The only reason I know he was trying to bite off her tattoo were the teeth marks we see afterwards.
After abuse moment 3, Lily runs to Atlas and the two cry, eat popcorn together like a bunch of girlypops. However, while she was at the hospital getting checked over, they discover she is pregnant.
And basically, the rest of the movie is her struggling with if she should go back to her husband or not.
Eventually she reconciles with him, allowing him to be in their child’s life, but when it comes to their marriage, they are donezo.
After a short period of time, she once again runs into Atlas and the two finally start backup where they left off.
But honestly, I didn’t care. Atlas almost seems like a stalker in some ways. I honestly doubt things would have turned out the way it did if he never entered the picture.
Ryle has some issues, which they later explain is due to him feeling responsible for his brother’s death, as… either he was playing with a gun or his brother was playing with the gun, either way it goes off and his brother dies. He might have been the one who pulled the trigger, I don’t remember. But that is something that would screw you up.
In a lot of ways, I don’t think this movie works. The real romance in the movie is between Lily and Atlas, but we only get maybe a couple of scenes with them together. A few with them as teens and barely anything with them as adults.
So, the connection and deep love they supposedly have just wasn’t there in my opinion, coming off more like a brother and sister that haven’t seen each other in a really long time.
That’s not to say the relationship with Ryle is any better. Lily and Ryle have almost nothing in common and zero chemistry, I have no idea why these two fell in love other than he’s hot.
Plus, we know this relationship turns abusive, so it isn’t like anyone is rooting for these two either.
I give It Ends with Us a SKIP rating.
Now to wrap things up with the BTS drama.
There is still more to add because I didn’t even get to the part where Ryan Reynolds steps into it. I can’t really confirm this to be true, but a lot of the drama frogs keep mentioning how Blake Lively invited Justin Baldoni over to her house, to have Ryan Reynolds personally threaten him.
It’s even rumored that Nice Pool in the last Deadpool movie was a dig at Justin Baldoni, mocking him. I always kind of felt like I was missing a joke there when that character popped up. I just figured maybe it was a comic book character reference I didn’t get. But now it makes sense, the “it” was Ryan Reynolds poking fun at Justin Baldoni.
In the end, this whole drama is just a giant mess. Everyone is suing everybody; I have no idea how this will play out. But it seems like opinions have shifted against Blake Lively and even Ryan Reynolds.
But I can’t really see why, we still have a woman who was feeling uncomfortable around someone kissing and touching her. This should be prime me too material, yet most of the drama frogs I see taking sides are mostly women taking his side.
Just a very unusual situation, that seems unnecessary and could have been avoided if both parties weren’t so goddamn weird.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
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