“It Ends with Us” - Read the room.

Time to dust off a cliched movie critic question - who is this movie even for? That actually wasn’t my question, but the question of a fellow critic as the end credits rolled for It Ends with Us. Despite being one of only four men in the mostly full theater, I refrained from answering with a vagina joke. Too easy and a little dangerous. But I also refrained because I knew full well that women weren’t the only people this movie was made for.

To be clear, this movie’s intended commercial audience is women. Particularly, the millions of women who made Colleen Hoover’s book of the same title the best-selling novel of 2023, a novel that has sold at least six million copies since it was first published in 2016. And I know it’s women because the book is found in the romance section of the bookstore, a section in which any men found there are probably on a list.

The subject matter is also the stuff of Lifetime Channel movies, a channel never associated with male viewership. Blake Lively stars as Lily Blossom Bloom (six million copies, people), a woman whose life is filled with domestic abuse/violence. First as a child from her parents, then as an adult from a love interest. Also, she likes flowers so much she opens her own flower boutique in Boston. Seriously, no man is ever reading this book or seeing this movie without serious coercion.

The film begins with Lily attending her father’s funeral and literally having nothing nice to say about him (Kevin McKidd) after being forced by her mother (Amy Morton) to deliver a eulogy. I submit that this is the first instance of domestic abuse observed in this film and is also a fascinating thought exercise. How many people have been forced to deliver a eulogy for a family member they don’t like, let alone hate with a passion? And how many of them cried themselves to sleep that night after lying through their teeth about the not-so-dearly deceased? I hope all of these people do what Lily did - say “here are five things I liked about my father” and walk out after an uncomfortably long silence.

Upon returning home to Boston, Lily is sitting on the edge of an apartment building’s rooftop when ridiculously good-looking, chiseled, neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, also directing) comes storming through the roof’s door flinging chairs out of his way. When Ryle finally notices Lily, he notes the sturdiness of the chairs, then practically demands Lily get off the edge. Lily politely declines, the two strike up a conversation, laugh at each other’s straight-from-porn names, Ryle bluntly states he wants to have sex with Lily, begins caressing her, then abruptly leaves when he’s called to perform an emergency surgery. Before leaving, Ryle asks if will see her again and Lily says no. Ladies and gentlem...I mean other ladies - your meet-cute. Or at least what passes for a meet-cute for future abusive relationships.

Even if you are not one of the women who read the novel, you know where this movie is heading. Ryle and Lily will somehow bump into each other again, start dating, engage in a couple of sex scenes that are only PG-13 steamy, then the abuse will begin. You might even be able to guess that the film intersperses flashbacks to Lily’s teen years (played by Isabela Ferrer) to show us her first love, a homeless boy named Atlas (Alex Neustaedter) whose own abuse at the hands of his parents gives him something in common with Lily to bond over. And you will definitely guess that Atlas (played by Brandon Sklenar) reappears in Lily’s life at some point in the present to supercharge Ryle’s violent streak. This movie plays out as if the Lifetime Channel binge-watched Days of Our Lives.

The only real question to answer is how this thing ends. Does Lily leave Ryle by the end? Does Ryle eventually kill her, Atlas, or both of them? Does Lily begrudgingly go back to Ryle and the film fades to black while slowly zooming in on a single tear running down Lily’s bruised cheek? Does she end up with Atlas, only to find that he is also abusive? Does Lily’s best friend Allysa (Jenny Slate), who is also Ryle’s sister (Lifetime!!), scream at both of them after the flower shop burns down with Allysa’s husband (Hasan Minhaj) and baby still inside, then find consolation and love in Atlas’ arms? I swear to you I do not watch Lifetime or read books like this.

The strength of the film lies in the way it presents Lily’s perspective of what is happening between her and Ryle. That both the abusers and abused spin fanciful tales trying to explain away the black eyes, bruised body, and broken bones, and those tales are usually easily seen through - if one is actually looking. And not just the physical stuff, but the mentally manipulative stuff as well. Using well-timed edits and fades to and from black, we only know what Lily knows. A fuzzy memory of what happened with a tacked-on explanation of it being an accident.

I realize this doesn’t sound like a fun time at the movies. Despite the clever framing of the abuse, the film is quite uneven. The relationship between Ryle and Lily was never really believable. In fact, Ryle and Lily as human characters wasn’t particularly believable. Everything about them felt artificial and contrived, even to the point of them literally voicing their similarities to a soap opera.

This might have snuck by if not for the contrast provided by teenaged Lily and Atlas’ relationship. They seemed like real people with real emotions, their relationship developing organically. I was far more engaged in the film when we were with them, the emotions powerful as they confided in each other and the tension palpable when Lily’s father could discover them at any moment and explode. I would much rather have spent the entire movie with them than watching the two grown-ups and knowing full well that Ryle would lose his mind the moment he found out Atlas was nearby (and decidedly not the third point of a love triangle).

I think this movie wants its intended audience to include men. I think the point is to raise awareness to what domestic abuse and violence often looks like, not just to the victims or their abusers, but to the friends and family of the victims and abusers, so they can take action. It’s definitely not looking for an audience that just wants to be entertained or have a date night. So, unfortunately, the movie is going to have to live with women telling men about the stronger points of the movie (Jenny Slate has an amazing line near the end, once she’s clued into what happened to Lily) and hoping those men aren’t also watching a football game.

Rating: Ask for seven dollars back, ladies.