
Justin Baldoni, left, and Blake Lively in a scene from “It Ends With Us.” Nicole Rivelli/Sony Pictures via AP
Long ago now, I was tasked with the usually rewarding mandate of seeking out Maine-related movies to write about for this fine publication. That’s led me to discover films, filmmakers and little-known Maine backstories aplenty, and continues to make this column one of my favorite professional writing gigs.
But sometimes the trail of Maine movie breadcrumbs leads you astray.
I saw the new Hollywood drama-romance “It Ends With Us,” 100 percent to examine its Maine connections. It … did not go well.
Maine connections in ‘It Ends With Us” are illusory at best.
The film, based on a controversial bestseller (we’ll get there) by Texas-based author Colleen Hoover, sees its heroine, the on-the-nose named Lily Blossom Bloom (Blake Lively) returning for her father’s funeral to her picturesque Maine hometown of – wait for it – Plethora. Plethora, Maine. (Raise your hand if you immediately thought of “Three Amigos.”) The film (and book) is packed with such weirdly prosaic names to go with the plot’s succession of would-be shocking coincidences, contrivances and twists.
But let’s talk Plethora, Maine. Of course, such a place doesn’t exist. If Hoover knew anything about our state, she’d make up one of the few place names we haven’t swiped from picturesque cities around the world. Maybe Venice, Maine. Or That City Where They Shot Game of Thrones, Maine.
Plus, Plethora, like the rest of this supposedly New England-centric film (city gal Lily lives in Boston) was shot entirely in New Jersey. At least Boston gets a few travelogue establishing shots of Boston Harbor and the gleaming Bunker Hill Bridge. Maine is represented by the lavishly set decorated interiors of Lily’s childhood home and a pokey little graveyard in Hoboken. There’s one brave soul at the funeral who gives a half-hearted attempt at a Maine accent, but otherwise this might as well have been set in, well, New Jersey.
“It Ends With Us” is also not very good.
Sure, it’s a fun sport making fun of a big budget film from away trying to steal a little Maine local color. But I spent the film’s 2 hours and 10 minutes marveling at its bewildering unoriginality. (Here, I’m going to throw a content warning for domestic violence while avoiding spoilers as much as possible.)
Lily meets a hunky, tightly wound guy on the rooftop of his impossibly lavish Boston building (director and star Justin Baldoni from “Jane the Virgin”). The grieving but spunky Lily immediately susses him out as a “crypto bro,” which is so apt, the reveal that he’s actually a hot-shot brain surgeon is one of the films lone shocks. Regardless, the two enter into an on-and-off flirtation, aided by the coincidence that the guy (named “Ryle,” which I only finally realized was a human name once I saw it written down) has a quirky sister (the always delightful Jenny Slate) who winds up as Lily’s best friend and only employee. (Lily is opening an impossibly twee flower shop named Lily’s Bloom, because of course she is.)
“It Ends With Us” tackles a big issue badly.
The film (and book) is under fire for romanticizing an abusive relationship, and I’m firmly in that camp, too. Ryle is a charming but pushy romantic type, while Lily seems to forget her backbone as soon as she succumbs to the doctor’s insistent charms. Their relationship’s fraught nature alternates swoony PG-13 love scenes, forced banter that probably sounds more believable on the page, and incidents whose true nature are supposed to knock our socks off when director Baldoni lowers the third act boom.
The thing is, almost every single interaction, line, and plot twist in ”It Ends With Us” is played out with a breathless obviousness, as if we’ve never seen a Lifetime movie of the week. Lily has a semi-tragic backstory involving her father and the improbably hunky homeless teen she spots squatting in the abandoned semi-mansion next door (named – sigh – Atlas), and Hoover’s plotting so obviously pulls from its lucrative inspirations that the film becomes a game of spot the genre staple. Every character has a Nicholas Sparks backstory trauma and a gorgeous Nancy Meyers kitchen, basically.
Note: It’s recently come out that Lively and Baldoni had some unspecified on-set incident. We don’t know what, but the fact that the director/co-star has hired Johnny Depp’s emergency PR team is not a good sign, considering the subject matter. That the actress has thus been subjected to a flood of misogynist online abuse is likewise predictable.
Blake Lively is given an impossible task.
Lily starts out with some snap (she loves her some outlandishly expensive-looking designer accessories on her tattered Carhart jacket), and I think Lively’s a decent actress. There may be some verisimilitude in the character’s “ignore all red flags” reenacting of the abusive relationship she witnessed in flashbacks (Isabella Ferrer is equally able as young Lily), but in practice, the choice leaves Lively to dither and clam up at pivotal moments so much that you want to throw some Raisinets. Plus, Atlas’ reemergence sees her would-be romantic ideal exhibit some very Ryle-esque controlling behavior I’m not sure the film truly recognizes. Even Lily’s big turn is marked by Hoover’s overly writerly touches, as when the movie’s title finally emerges from Lily’s mouth with a self-impressed thud.
Is there anything worthwhile in “It Ends With Us?”
Sure. Jenny Slate is a global treasure, and while it’s tempting to say the film would be twice as good with her in the lead, there’s no way a Jenny Slate character would be as gullible as Lively’s Lily. Slate also has the one scene that got to me, a late-film talk with best friend Lily where she confronts her feelings for her brother with welcome complexity. (Her husband in the film is played by Hasan Minhaj, and I spent much of the running time wondering what those two crazy kids were up to while Lively and Baldoni wane through the plot’s motions.)
The film’s message is worthwhile. And, again, I get that the movie (a surprise box office hit) wasn’t made with me in mind. I saw “It Ends With Us” on a Wednesday matinee as literally the only man in a theater pretty full of mostly mature women, and I did wonder at their discussions in the car going home to their own husbands in the wake of the protagonist (finally) confronting her cycle of often unacknowledged abuse. Still, the film’s own principled take on abusive relationships is so programmatic, so by the numbers and woozy with ill-fitting romanticism, that I left wondering, too, how effective its message truly was.
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