I wasn’t sure what to expect from It Ends With Us as I hadn’t read the book or seen a trailer. I knew it starred Blake Lively and, rumor has it, got a writing punch up from her hubby Ryan Reynolds. I don’t know if that’s true but the dialog was pretty good… which was a surprise for a movie with such… unlikely… character names. Jeepers. Anastasia Steele called and she wants her hokey names back.

The flick stars Lively as a professional flower girl Lily Bloom. She has a meet cute with an unfortunately handsome neurosurgeon named Ryle Kinkaid and they fall for each other. Meanwhile, we get flashbacks to her first teen love… Atlas Corrigan. Jeepers…

It’s vanishingly rare to get this kind of film these days, much less as a major theatrical release. For over half the film, it’s just a cute and sexy romance between two people who won the genetic lottery. And I was into it… Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni make for a smolderingly cute couple and I was rooting for them.

They are surrounded by a solid cast. Jenni Slate does a charming, lovely, and emotionally intelligent job as Lively’s best friend. It reminded me that Slate needs more leading roles. Isabella Ferrer plays a teen Lily Bloom in flashbacks and it took me half the movie to realize she wasn’t a glammed down Lively. The casting is surreal… someone get me the name of her cloner.

It’s too bad the movie had to actually have drama and conflict. Given what I’ve read since I saw the movie, apparently the book is a LOT more blunt about what’s going on in the romance… but the movie seems desperate to obfuscate its trauma lest we lose respect for Lively’s character.

But, yeah, after some very movie-like coincidences, there’s a sudden bout of ragemonster-itus that seemingly comes out of nowhere. It felt like character assassination in service of hokey melodrama. But eventually the film embraces what it’s really about and it ceases to feel like melodrama. It just suffers from poor presentation and edited until it gets there. Ultimately where the movie goes solidifies into something genuine… but it was very wobbly in its attempt to get there.

But I still really enjoyed the movie and the performances. I want to rate it higher but its clumsy handling of its melodrama kept me at arm’s length. I eventually came around, but only after Olympic levels of eye-rolling.

Score: 84