"It Ends with Us", a paradoxical picture that makes you question: what makes a movie great?

When you consider yourself a cinephile, a person who loves watching all kinds of movies, analyzing them, trying to understand why you enjoyed them, you develop some kind of sixth sense. But instead of being able to see death people, you identify what makes a movie work. You see Steven Spielberg moving the camera at the end of The Fablemans and you see the best use of cinematic language, you can see how Aaron Sorkin manipulates the structure and dialogue with outstanding grace, or the way Greig Fraser illuminates and uses the focus in a way that is just hypnotic. But, every once in a while, you see a movie that just kind of works, it should not, but it is really immersive. That is the case of It Ends with Us.

This movie is about a girl (Blake Lively, who here also acts as a producer) who met a guy (Justin Baldoni, who also functions as the director) in a rooftop, and with time falls in "love". There are some subplots about the guy's family and the girl's dream to own a flower shop, not really very important to the story. Because this picture is about the domestic violence that the protagonist replicates from her mother, and functions as a foil with the relationship she had with her high school love, whom she reencounters in the present.

After a couple of months of Lively trying to market her movie in a Reynolds' kind of way, entering in conflict with the co-protagonist and director, and surprisingly having the theaters here in Mexico absolutely full for weeks, this movie arraived to streaming. During its theaters run I was not very interesting in watching this picture, and I do not regret that decision, but watching it on my house was a great experience.

The film, as a cinematic piece, as a narrative and storytelling thing, as an audiovisual experience is directly rubbish. "Mediocre" is a flirtatious remark to this movie. The direction es boring, the cinematography generic, the production design lacks any personality and the montage is not very intelligent. The script is reiterative, obvious, predictable and has a serious trouble with the characters saying exactly what they are doing; which as a storyteller is the worst someone can do to you, it is like american anti-terrorism torture.

The characters are desperating and shallow. The main guy is a walking red flag, you hate and fear him since the beginning. The protagonist is just in denial and delisuonal, making you scream "realize what the f* is happening". The best friend is kind of ridicoulus, but with an enourmous heart. And the teenage love is everything good in this world, being completely and absolutely devoted to the protagonist, being an enfurating stereotype of the good guy who is just being the second choice after the first one turns out to be a lout (I know, shocking…).

Even with all that, and defying common sense, the melodramatic tone is offensively effective. It is kind of childish most of the time, but since the beginning it hooks you up and make you enjoy the characters relationships even before the plot formerly starts. It is weird that not even in isolation you could not pinpoint what of the characters is what makes you like them, in fact is easier to point what they do wrong (as I did in the previous paragraph), nonetheless you end up very invested with them. You start worrying for them, hoping everything turns out good even when you hate their decisions, at the end it manages to affect you emotionally.

Behind all these one note characters and unspired plots, there are some effective and well explored topics. The way the movie explores self-ghastlighting, the nature of domestic violence and how it is something that passes from generation through generation is done in a very cinematic and deeper way in contrast to the almost caricaturistic writting of the rest of the script. In addition, the third act have some scenes that, even with the floppy and corny writting, have very strong ideas and interactions on how the protagonist approaches her relationships at the end of the movie. These scenes in its conception are so good that it breaks the ugly shell that contains them with the dull writting of a high class white woman in a first world country, getting a chance to really shine.

At the end, there are things that cannot be denied. This movie is bad, is a cinematic piece of cr* that just by sawing it killed a couple of my neurons and reduced a high percentage of my credibility as a cinephile. But, at the same time, and against all odds, it managed to be a truly engaging, emotional and entertaining; which is more than what I can said of most of the movies that Hollywood, big streaming services and critics want to shove down my throat.

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Faela Y Luke
Demostraste mucha creatividad al exponer tus ideas.
11:02 27 October, 2024
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marvelousmars
Hahaha I love this review. I didn't watch the movie, but I'm not surprised that it can basically be summed up as "trashy and bad, but maybe a little addictive".
09:03 24 October, 2024
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Lu_Arsa
I found your approach really interesting, great analysis from your part! , if you have a chance check my article and leave a like y you like it :) https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10025599/About-choosing-a-movie-that-started-all
15:52 23 October, 2024
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Stephanmurawski
You can't have two items in the same category mate
10:45 23 October, 2024
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Ken's Movie Malaise
This movie was really bland and I really regret watching it... I wasted 120 minutes of my life.
10:19 23 October, 2024
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Alejandro Franco "Arlequin"
02:06 19 October, 2024
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