It Ends With Us: a 'tough little movie' adaptation of Colleen Hoover's novel

Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel about domestic abuse, "It Ends With Us", was a "monumental success" that was translated into 20 languages, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. 

"So now, inevitably, it's also been translated into the language of cinema, starring Blake Likely as the story's heroine Lily Bloom."

'Shallower than a toddler's paddling pool'

Bloom is a Boston florist struggling to process the death of her father, who was a pillar of his community but was also violent towards her mother.

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One day on a Boston rooftop, Lily meets Ryle (Justin Baldoni, who also directs), "an uncommonly handsome neurosurgeon" who "slowly but surely" sweeps her off her feet. But soon, she bumps into her first love, restaurateur Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), who begins to worry that her "drop-dead-gorgeous" partner might be an abuser in the mould of her late father.

We, of course, "know better. Or do we?" There are better films about domestic abuse – this one is at times "shallower than a toddler's paddling pool" – but few are as handsome to look at.

'Almost offensively long'

"It Ends With Us" is likely to be a "summer smash", said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. It's slick and soapy, and has been cannily marketed to woo Swifties (Lively is one of Taylor Swift's closest friends). But if you set those "cold calculations" aside, it's a "surprisingly warm and moving" drama that tells a story of abuse "that's far less obvious" than you might imagine.

"It Ends With Us" is "at times touching, often ridiculous", and at over two hours, "almost offensively long", said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. But I wouldn't describe it as shallow. Buried under all the "gauzy romanticism" and the "luxuriously coiffed thickets" of Lively's mane is a "tough little movie about women, bad choices, worse men and decisions that doesn't fit into a tidy box".