Given that my review of the book “It Ends with Us” was among the first articles I posted, it was only appropriate that I also review the adapted movie. 

My opinions on the book were quite positive, contrary to others’ thoughts on it. I expressed that the book gave some surface-level insight on the difficulties of being in and navigating a domestic abuse relationship. This is especially true for people who previously thought that exiting a relationship like this was as easy as getting up and leaving. 

To begin, I was disappointed with the casting of Blake Lively playing the role of Lily. Lily Bloom was the protagonist and was portrayed as a naïve 23-year-old. However, Blake Lively is much older than that and did not quite fit the role. Furthermore, Lily was described to be a redhead.

I wish they had casted a younger actress with red hair, which would have given them the opportunity to make a name for themself, rather than casting a blonde and dying her hair red. Aside from that, I thought the other actors were casted well for their role. 

There were times while I was watching the movie where I felt like I only knew what was going on because I had read the book. I watched the movie with a friend who was unfamiliar with the book and found myself having to explain some things that were not depicted clearly. Additionally, I noticed many scenes from the book completely skipped over in the movie. 

I understand that a good chunk of scenes are removed in most adaptations of books, but considering that the duration of the movie was well over two hours long, I’d expect most scenes to appear in the movie. Removing that many scenes made the movie seem like it was rushed to produced, which is not a good look considering they began developing the movie in 2019.

Finally, the marketing of this film has been controversial. Blake Lively and author Colleen Hoover, have been receiving backlash and have been under scrutiny for the way they have marketed the film. After the great success of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” last summer, it seemed like they were trying to recreate similar vibes and tried making it the ‘movie of the summer,’ which backfired considering the seriousness of this subject. 

We can observe Blake Lively’s frivolity and carelessness to the subject by the way she told viewers watching the movie to “wear your florals” as if it was a rom-com film, in addition to discussing trivial things in interviews like the costuming, which were questionable. It appears that this was just no more than a quick money grab for her. In addition, it is unfortunate that the drama taking place amongst the cast has been receiving more attention than the movie itself.

Overall, the movie was not terrible, but it also was not as good as I had anticipated. This movie had the potential to be sensational and educate people, but instead most of the attention has been shifted to the bad marketing and the drama between the cast. 

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