IT ENDS WITH US First Viewing

Yeah...I saw it. Couldn't resist. It is pretty much what you would expect based on the backlash. But let me tell you...if there had been no media backlash at all, and I had walked into this blindly basing all my knowledge of this on Blake Lively's marketing aesthetic...I would feel very jipped. Not only is the advertising tonedeaf...but it's intentionally misguiding you. And no...not in an interesting way. Not like the trailer for BARBARIAN, which cleverly misguided you to build the suspense. No...this is just pure manipulation. You'd think the movie is a romantic feel-good film where the big theme of it is florals. But flowers as a symbol in the film, are peripheral at best. Really the only ties to it are the fact that Lively's character name is Lily Bloom (yes...that's not a joke), and she owns a flower shop. That's it.

 IT ENDS WITH US is a glorified lifetime movie/soap opera, indulgently stretched to an over two hour runtime. It's far too long, and to be honest, I was more offended by how soft and watered down the actual domestic abuse depictions felt in the film, compared to the marketing itself. It felt like this was made by someone who doesn't have a clue about domestic abuse or how to interpret it. It was like watching a Disney film version of an abusive relationship, which was kind of funny in and of itself, even though it shouldn't have been. The soundtrack is hilarious. It's some weepy Bon Iver type shit the whole time. A "White Girl Coffee Shop" playlist, basically.

I will say for Lively...she would've been a great 90s romantic comedy gal, and we'd all adore her. Despite her vapid behavior as a celebrity, it's clear she has the instinct and the charisma to play these sappy scenes naturally, where you believe her and like her. I know she preferred to take the wife/mom route as a woman much like Gwyneth Paltrow, which is perfectly fine but...if she wanted to, she could likely turn in a powerful performance with the right guidance. The problem is, in the case of this film...she absolutely could not be bothered to turn in a vulnerable or emotional performance, once the material begins to get dark after act one. She does not embody any of the trauma of her characters past, and how it is turning her into something she never intended in the present. There's an attempted rape scene as example. Her performance was so lazy and phoned in, and it felt as if she just wanted to just get it over with...so we could shift to another pointless montage with Cigarettes After Sex playing over it to fill the time.

She did not come to play in these scenes, and that in itself felt offensive to me. She only emphasized the stuff she knows is light and fluffy that are within her range, and refused to address the elephant in the room, hoping we all wouldn't notice. It shows in her behavior in the interviews, as I had mentioned in the previous post about this. The moment someone brings up abuse...she shifts the conversation to her haircare line or some ditsy sarcastic quip. All of that behavior, shows in the final product. This is Lively's film, not Baldoni's. Even when Lily must face such difficult decisions in the climax of the film...Lively is treating the scenes as if she's deciding which ice cream flavor to buy lol. She's "Abuse Barbie" I guess.

But yeah, the film sucked but it was totally worth it for me, to finally see it for myself. I enjoy the bad movies when it comes to stuff like this. As I suspected...neither Baldoni or Lively need to be directors. The material is tasteless enough. Anyone wanting to make material like this into a film...I question your motives. I think they are both full of shit lol.