Let's end it right here.
For all the hype surrounding this film, it sure isn't very good. The theme of domestic abuse has been done time and time again, and often much better. It Ends With Us lacks the suspense of a film like Sleeping With the Enemy, the grit of What's Love Got To Do With It, or even the TV movie The Burning Bed. It even lacks the bizarre campiness of something like Enough, with Jennifer Lopez. It Ends is more of a bland, but glossy lifetime movie with some major stars. I have not read the book, but I can assure you the movie is really not worth your time.
Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom. Yes! One of the terrible names these characters are given. There are others. Just scan through the cast list and you'll see them. And get this... she runs a flower shop of all things. If you set us up like that, you'd better give us a good story, movie. Anyway, it appears that most of the men these characters have known are abusive. Lily's dad, her high school boyfriend's mother's boyfriend, and now this studly brain surgeon played by the film's director. Will she recognize the danger she's in if she marries him? Will she be able to forgive her abusive father?? Will she go back to her high school boyfriend who is now a trendy chef??? Will she ever make a profit selling flowers????
The film takes a serious, long-standing problem and glosses it up irresponsibly. As an actor and a director, Baldoni comes off as narcissistic and shallow. In one scene he even askes Lively if she's ever seen a doctor with such a great set of abs, or whatnot. Try not to get it all over yourself, dude. The actual scenes where he abuses her are of course uncomfortable, but shot in such a sanitized way its almost hard to see what he has done to her. In one ridiculous scene, Baldoni and Lively are eating at the ex-boyfriend's restaurant and he notices an unremarkable bandage on her wrist. Then apparently he is supposed to notice she also has a black eye, but the makeup is so subtly applied you can barely see it. Blake Lively must have really not wanted anything to obscure her admittedly beautiful face too badly. The ex, from only these subtle clues is somehow able to deduce the two of them are in an abusive relationship just like that.
It isn't hard to see where we are headed in terms of plot, and there really isn't a good payoff to the tepid drama. The constant legal back and forth between the two stars is getting old in the press. If nothing else, it would seem to prove this was a troubled project from the get-go. Watch if you must, but there is nothing particularly compelling here. 3 of 10 stars.
The Hound.
Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom. Yes! One of the terrible names these characters are given. There are others. Just scan through the cast list and you'll see them. And get this... she runs a flower shop of all things. If you set us up like that, you'd better give us a good story, movie. Anyway, it appears that most of the men these characters have known are abusive. Lily's dad, her high school boyfriend's mother's boyfriend, and now this studly brain surgeon played by the film's director. Will she recognize the danger she's in if she marries him? Will she be able to forgive her abusive father?? Will she go back to her high school boyfriend who is now a trendy chef??? Will she ever make a profit selling flowers????
The film takes a serious, long-standing problem and glosses it up irresponsibly. As an actor and a director, Baldoni comes off as narcissistic and shallow. In one scene he even askes Lively if she's ever seen a doctor with such a great set of abs, or whatnot. Try not to get it all over yourself, dude. The actual scenes where he abuses her are of course uncomfortable, but shot in such a sanitized way its almost hard to see what he has done to her. In one ridiculous scene, Baldoni and Lively are eating at the ex-boyfriend's restaurant and he notices an unremarkable bandage on her wrist. Then apparently he is supposed to notice she also has a black eye, but the makeup is so subtly applied you can barely see it. Blake Lively must have really not wanted anything to obscure her admittedly beautiful face too badly. The ex, from only these subtle clues is somehow able to deduce the two of them are in an abusive relationship just like that.
It isn't hard to see where we are headed in terms of plot, and there really isn't a good payoff to the tepid drama. The constant legal back and forth between the two stars is getting old in the press. If nothing else, it would seem to prove this was a troubled project from the get-go. Watch if you must, but there is nothing particularly compelling here. 3 of 10 stars.
The Hound.
- TOMASBBloodhound
- Feb 15, 2025