Rating – **** (4/5)
The gloss that surrounds a romantic comedy or a romantic drama often overpowers the depth of it, provided if there is any. Unfortunately, modern-day rom-coms have resorted to an amalgamation of trying to keep up with changing times while enabling the tropes from earlier successful films – it isn’t a bad thing but it is mostly ineffective where the modernity, more often than not, appears to be a check-box routine in a script than displaying an organic emotion.
Adapted from the book, ‘It Ends With Us’ by Colleen Hoover, the movie of the same name arrives as a rare entrant that doesn’t try to tick any boxes for the sake of it – instead focusing on investing genuine chemistry, raw emotions and most important – reliability. There has been a consensus so far with the film on how it tackles big issues but gradually ventures into being a soap opera – something that leaves me confused.
There is a generic flavor that might seem to be a primetime opera more than a feature film but never in a degraded manner. That treatment works for the movie where it stays on its path and doesn’t deviate into uncharted territories. It helps that you have someone like Blake Lively leading the show (see what I did there?) because her sheer screen presence is enough to have you swooning over her, crying with her, feeling for her, and obviously loving her. Lively is a terrific performer and she can grasp and display an incredible depth to her role of Lily Blossom Bloom. The woman rarely ever goes wrong.
The other performances are as fantastic as you expect them to be – especially Justin Baldoni as Ryle, who has also directed the film. Imagine directing a film where you’re playing the ‘bad guy’. However, I only use the term ‘bad guy’ for effect but not to actually describe Ryle. It is an immensely tricky terrain with Ryle, where you detest him for his actions and there is absolutely no excuse for that but the movie never villainizes him to be a devious woman-beater all the time – he isn’t despicable but he has made a mistake which can never be forgiven.
The film isn’t devoid of its shallow spots and that arrives mainly with the portrayal of Atlas (played by Brandon Sklenar) mainly due to how is somewhat feels that Sklenar didn’t fully comprehend what Atlas went through and his present-day platonic relationship with Lily works mainly due to the fabulous performances of Alex Neustaedter and Isabela Ferrer, who play the roles of young Atlas and Lily respectively.
It is also a wonder as to what was Hasan Minhaj cast for. Except for a couple of jokes, Minhaj has nothing to do. Jenny Slate Lily’s best friend can create a substantial impact with that one scene especially more than the others when she confronts Lily after the incident.
It Ends With Us has a few loopholes but in a day and age where modern-day romantic dramas and comedies are just not able to crack it, a film like this can successfully adapt from a best-selling and hugely loved book. The film makes you feel right in your gut and when emotion takes over the nitty-gritty of a motion picture, it stops being a factor for anyone to overly analyse and just let the purity of your emotions take over.