It Ends With Us (#586)


The film I saw today is based on a novel and is described as a melodrama.  It certainly is a drama, and perhaps an over dramatic drama but melo it ain't.  Starring Blake Lively, who doesn't look too well and two suitors who look too much alike, IT ENDS WITH US is far too long at 2 hours and 10 minutes to tell what is not a compelling story.  You know you are in for dysfunction at the beginning when Lively, as Lily Bloom, driving to see her newly widowed mother who castigates her first for not coming to see her father when he was dying and then instructs her to do the eulogy "just give five reasons why you loved your father." At the funeral, Lily stands at the podium, says "five things I loved about my father" and stands there silently in what we used to call a pregnant pause, then leaves the stage and walks out. We next see Lily on a high rise rooftop in Boston where she encounters Ryle (what kind of name is Ryle?) who is not only a neurosurgeon and one of the lookalikes, he also directed the film.  And the movie goes downhill from there with scenes of her earlier life, where she meets the other lookalike, her courtship, and achieves her lifelong dream of running her own business (a flower shop—get it?  Lily Bloom?). And we learn she had been traumatized as a child by her parents' behavior and realizes her marriage is headed in the same direction.  Enough drama for you?  59% of critics and 95% of audiences gave it a thumbs up. 

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