Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends with Us.Supplied
It Ends with Us
Directed by Justin Baldoni
Written by Christy Hall, based on the novel by Colleen Hoover
Starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and Brandon Sklenar
Classification PG; 130 minutes
Opens in theatres Aug. 9
Every Wednesday evening, when The New York Times publishes its bestseller list, the good people at Simon & Schuster tumble dancing into the streets because their megastar author Colleen Hoover is up there again. Only 44 years old, she’s sold more than 30 million books in 20 different languages; she has a billion tags on BookTok. This week, as they have for up to 165 weeks, her novels It Ends with Us and It Starts with Us hold spots one and seven in hardcover fiction, and spots one and four in trade paperback.
The good people at Sony are hoping it’s their turn to dance this weekend: The film version of It Ends with Us, starring Blake Lively as heroine Lily Blossom Bloom, is projected to open as high as US$40-million. (It’s the first Hoover screen adaptation, though certainly not the last; her thriller Verity, sitting at No. 14, is in development at Amazon MGM Studios.) Combine that with the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds, and the Lively/Reynolds household might just save this summer’s sluggish box office.
I approached IEwU warily – I’m a Hoover skeptic, and she, director Justin Baldoni (Five Feet Apart) and screenwriter Christy Hall (Daddio) have broadcast how closely they’ve worked together. Not only did they pull much of the dialogue directly from the book, they recruited 10 fans in 2023 to offer script notes (1,000 volunteered). It seems to have worked: The theatre the other night was packed with bubbling young women who gave audible feedback throughout, oohing at the sexy lines, awwing at the romantic ones.
Newly arrived in Boston to open her long-dreamt-of flower shop, and mourning the father who used to beat her mother, Lily is gazing pensively from an apartment rooftop when suddenly an enraged man arrives, kicking chairs around. That should be her first clue, but since he’s dishy neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni), instead they share confidences. Cue the first quotable line, “Naked truths aren’t always pretty,” speedily followed by the second: “How many women has this worked on?” Lily asks. “All of them,” Ryle replies.
His beeper calls him away, but they meet cute a second time, through Allysa (Jenny Slate), a wealthy socialite who works for fun at Lily’s shop and happens to be Ryle’s sister. Although Ryle harbours a dark secret that makes him allergic to relationships, Lily wins him over; there’s a dating montage and a quickie wedding.
But uh-oh, flashbacks warn that Lily (played as a teenager by Isabela Ferrer) may still yearn for her first love, Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter as a teen, Brandon Sklenar as an adult). His mother was beaten, too; he carved Lily a heart made of oak because she is resilient and can take care of herself. Now he’s in Boston, the owner of a restaurant with an aesthetic very like Lily’s shop.
That’s not great, because Ryle tends to hurt Lily “accidentally,” once knocking her to the floor, once pushing her down the stairs. Baldoni films these two incidents blurrily, but a third is sharply clear, and Lily leaves Ryle. Even though she’s pregnant. Gradually, she lets him back into her life – divorced, they will gingerly co-parent – but she assures her baby daughter that the abuse “ends with us.” Then there are a bunch more endings in case anyone missed anything.
Incredibly, Lively makes it all work. Beyond nailing Lily’s exact shade of auburn hair, funky/sexy dress and vision-notebook stuffed with flowers, she also conveys her luminousness and strength, and reminds you how pleasurable it can be to watch a romantic thriller. (You may find yourself recalling Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy.). Lively is so good that you barely notice that her character doesn’t have an arc – she starts admirable and ends confirmed to be admirable – or that the six people in the film seem to know only each other.
She sure tees up an adaptation of Hoover’s sequel, It Starts with Us, which continues the story of Lily and Atlas. I didn’t quite catch his line near this film’s end, but I sensed it was a fan fave, so I Googled it: “In the future, if you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again, fall in love with me.” It popped up instantly. Printed on a bookmark.
Special to The Globe and Mail