It Ends with Us: A Romantic Drama Burdened with Cliches & Coincidences (Blu-ray)

The Film:

Ever since Colleen Hoover's novel "It Ends with Us" was published in 2016, it was remarkably popular, selling over a million copies over the next three years. However, it didn't stop there, eventually reaching #1 on The New York Times' Best Seller list, and selling millions more copies to become the best-selling book of 2023 as well. This resounding success seemed to make it inevitable that we would find ourselves with a film adaptation of Hoover's romantic drama before long, and indeed, eight years later, one finally arrived on the big screen from screenwriter Christy Hall and director Justin Baldoni. With such immense popularity, could the film possibly live up to fans' expectations, or would it become another one to throw on the "the book was better" pile?

The film starts with Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) going back to her home town in Maine for her father's funeral, where she has trouble coming up with anything to say for the eulogy, eventually walking out and going back to Boston. While driving around one night, she decides to go up to the rooftop of an apartment complex where she meets a neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni). The two start to hit it off, but he ends up having to leave for an emergency surgery.

Later on, Lily starts work on her dream of running a flower shop, and while cleaning up the building she plans to use, she meets Alyssa (Jenny Slate) and offers her a job. Coincidentally, it turns out that Alyssa is Ryle's sister, which has the two meeting up again after their rooftop encounter, except this time their relationship goes to the next level. Meanwhile, we learn of Lily's past relationship with a boy she knew back in school, a boy she just happens to run into all these years later at a restaurant he owns, inevitably causing a bit of friction in her current relationship.

On the outset, "It Ends with Us" presents itself as the same kind of romantic drama we've seen time and time again. A woman meets a man, falls in love, and the two begin a relationship, only to have another man appear and cause complications. However, to its credit, it does try to go beyond the usual romantic trappings of a story of this type by attempting to fold in an important message about domestic abuse and the effect it has on families & relationships. The problem here is that it's done in a rather weak fashion, not only trying to place the message in the aforementioned cliched storyline, but also handling it rather clumsily within the narrative.

To make matters worse, the progress of the story is heavily dependent on remarkable coincidences, the most I can recall seeing in a film in quite some time. Just to name a few, Lily just happens to pick the rooftop of the apartment complex where she meets Ryle, Alyssa just happens to be obsessed with the building that Lily has chosen for her flower shop, Alyssa just happens to be Ryle's sister, and they all just happen to go to the restaurant that's owned by Lily's former boyfriend (there's another one later on involving Lily's phone that's laughably ludicrous, but it's a mild spoiler). This happens so often throughout that you shouldn't be surprised if you end up with a headache from the number of times you end up rolling your eyes.

A film like this might be able to get away with one or two extreme coincidences, but when it's happening over and over again, all it does is demonstrate weak, lazy writing, which really doesn't help when it's trying to make a very serious point. In the end, "It Ends with Us" is just far too beset with narrative issues to have anywhere near the impact that it wants to have. Again, it has a very important message that it wants to get across, but they really needed to find a better means of presenting it, because as it is, the film merely ends up collapsing under a pile of cliches & coincidences, ultimately leaving us with a maudlin romantic drama that fails to engage.

Video/Audio:

"It Ends with Us" comes to Blu-ray in a 2.39:1, 1080p High Definition transfer of excellent quality, with the picture looking sharp & clear throughout its 130-minute duration. Likewise, the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio is fantastic, giving you all of the dialogue and music in outstanding quality. Overall, Sony Pictures has done a wonderful job in both areas for the film's physical home debut.

Special Features:

None.

Conclusion:

"It Ends with Us," an adaptation of Colleen Hoover's popular novel, has an important message about domestic violence that it wants to get across, but sadly it ends up getting clumsily handled in a story that's buried under a pile of cliches & extreme coincidences, resulting in a romantic drama that lacks the necessary ingredients to engage its audience.

Score: 2.5/5

Available on Blu-ray starting tomorrow.

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