Blake Lively’s new movie ‘It Ends With Us’ cops mixed reviews
The US actress has hit the red carpet at the premiere for her latest buzzy movie, but some of the reviews haven’t been kind.
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Blake Lively has hit the red carpet to debut her latest buzzy film, as divisive reviews for her much-anticipated big screen adaptation pour in.
The US actress, who led arrivals at the New York premiere of It Ends With Us alongside actor husband Ryan Reynolds, stars as the lead character in the Sony Pictures drama, which is based on the best-selling 2016 novel of the same name penned by popular author Colleen Hoover.
While the book obtained a staunch, yet delayed, following after going viral on TikTok in 2021, it also earned its fair share of detractors, who accused Hoover of romanticising abuse.
The plot follows Lily Bloom (played by Lively), an emphatic, somewhat rebellious college graduate scarred from a family history of domestic violence, in which her father abused her mother.
Resenting both her parents, her dad for carrying out the violence and her mother for covering it up, Lily moves to Boston in a bid to pursue her dream of opening a florist shop.
Here, she meets successful, wealthy neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (played by Justin Baldoni). Their chemistry is instant and intense, but warning signs of abuse quickly crack the illusion.
Despite numerous instances of violence, the couple abruptly marry in Las Vegas before falling pregnant with their first child, all while Lily is unwittingly reconnected with her childhood love, the good guy, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar).
Early reviews for the film have been largely mixed, with an overwhelming sentiment that Lively, at least, delivered an impressive performance as the movie’s anchor.
In the negative camp,The Telegraph gave It Ends With Us a measly two stars, writing, “The swerves and mitigations – not least an obligatory tragic backstory to “explain” Ryle – make it a queasy, self-regarding sham.”
Associated Press critic Mark Kennedy wrote how a number of themes “suffer” as the film attempts to “balance the realities of domestic violence inside a rom-com and a female-empowerment movie.”
The New York Post deemed the violent scenes “hard to watch”, but ultimately, came across “less chilling than they would be in reality.”
“The mix of those two very different tones — glossy love and horrific clashes — borders on tacky,” the Post continued. “Baldoni finds a balance, though, and his film never slides into poor taste.
“There’s even a bit of truth to how a woman in such a situation might delude herself by using fantasy to distract from the cause of her pain. Indeed, Lily makes many excuses for Ryle until it becomes too much to bear.”
In the Time’s review, critic Stephanie Zacharek was more balanced in her assessment, arguing, “The movie is accurate and effective in this sense: for so many abused women, you never know how bad it can get, until it gets really bad.”
Zacharek adds, “Yet none of that is enough to make you fully buy what the movie’s selling.”
Digital Spy’s writer Mireia Mullor felt Ryle’s character “thankfully” didn’t get as much of a hero edit in the film than he did in the book.
“A more warranted criticism can (and should) be expressed about Ryle, a character whose controversial redemption arc is thankfully less present in the movie than in the book,” Mullor wrote.
It Ends With Us hits cinemas in Australia from Thursday.
Originally published as Blake Lively’s new movie ‘It Ends With Us’ cops mixed reviews
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