Adapting popular books for the big screen is nothing new in Hollywood.  It’s been going on for decades. Sometimes great books don’t turn out to be great movies and vice versa. Once in a while, a book is adapted so well that it transcends. The Harry Potter Series, The Hunger Games, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Lord of the Rings are fantastic literary works that were turned into great films. The newest novel turned into a movie is It Ends With Us. A worldwide bestseller by Colleen Hoover. 

Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) the wife of Ryan Reynolds, but a great actress in her own right, is a woman who has attended the funeral of her father in Maine. When she returns home to Boston she finds herself on a rooftop looking out at the city. A man named Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) comes crashing through a door and kicks a chair. Unbeknownst to him she was watching him. They start to talk but eventually go their separate ways. Months later they met again at her flower shop. It turned out he was her employee, Alysa’s (Jenny Slate) brother. This begins a sexual yet tumultuous relationship between them. There is a dark and hidden side to this beautiful neurosurgeon she didn’t expect.

In this film, there are flashbacks to the main characters’ teen years where she, (Isabella Ferrer) befriends a homeless boy named Atlas (Alex Nuestedter) who squats in the building across the street from her home. She feels sorry for him and starts to help him out. Eventually, they get to know each other and form a relationship. Until something bad happens and they are forced to separate for good. These flashbacks help to inform viewers about a modern-day element of the story, that has overarching ramifications throughout this very melodramatic film.  

The cast isn’t that large, but all the actors, especially the three main actors who play Lily, Ryle, and Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) are very exceptional. They bring a level of maturity to these roles. The story that unfolds in this film is one I can believe one hundred percent. I have lived in a family with an abusive father and I can attest to the violence that went on in my household. It was very emotional for me to watch these sequences unfold on screen. At first, they don’t seem like much, but when they add up it’s quite a lot of emotional and physical damage. One specific scene involving the younger Atlas getting beat to a pulp bothered me quite a bit.

Young adult novels or romantic novels can be a bit hit and miss when they are turned into movies. There is the love triangle aspect that gets all the ladies swooning. There is also the romanticism of love itself. We all want to think there is that special person in the world that we can love and will love us back. This film deals with love in a realistic way, not the typical way most books deal with love. The author Colleen Hoover, it seems has an idea of what true love is. She also knows how to add moments of genuine interest to the story.  I feel this story could be one that actually happens in the real world. I can relate to it, that’s for sure.

I’m a big fan of movies set in Boston and that’s where this one It Ends With Us is set. There are plenty of tracking shots of the city from various angles. Others off streets and bridges. The city of Boston is a character in the film. They glamorize a city that I have lived in my entire life. One scene where someone buys some flowers from Lively’s character shop reminds me why I don’t live there anymore and haven’t for many years. It’s way too expensive to live in Boston. I just visit occasionally.  It’s still a great and beautiful city though, especially in the summertime. 

The title of this movie, It Ends With Us, based on the book of the same name was revealed in a very powerful way. Not having read the book I didn’t know what it meant. That scene hit me like a ton of bricks. When it dawned on me what the title meant I was truly moved to tears. As I mentioned I have had abuse in my family going back for many years. What women in general go through on a daily basis regarding abuse is astounding. They have put up with a lot from husbands, boyfriends, and relatives for hundreds of years. This kind of abuse needs to stop. If it means a book-turned-film has to come out to get this out in the open, then so be it. It has to stop any way we as a culture can get it to stop. This story cited that fact very evidently. 

One thing about this movie and others like is that there are younger actors who play characters by other actors in other parts of the film. The young actress who plays Lively’s younger self seems to look, I know that’s the point, and sound like her. When I mean sounds like her I think she was dubbed to sound just like Lively unless I’m completely wrong. I haven’t seen this in many movies before. This was an interesting trick used by the filmmakers if indeed that’s what they did.

It Ends With Us was an emotional journey for me. With my family’s history of domestic abuse, this story took a turn I didn’t expect. The three main characters played by Lively,  Baldoni, and Sklenar were all fantastic in the movie. They were characters I could try to believe were in the situations depicted in the film. There was a beautiful score and plenty of shots of Boston that reminded me of what a great city it is. This story as a whole was one of the better young adult or romantic books turned films I’ve seen in recent memory. The director, Baldoni, and the writers, Christy Hall and the author Colleen Hoover genuinely captured this situation in as believable a way as humanly possible. I was emotionally moved by this story and its characters. Not having read the book did me a service. I wasn’t spoiled by anything that happened. 

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen