Summary
- Audiences love the romantic drama
It Ends With Us
, giving it an audience score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. - That number is a new career high for star Blake Lively, 9% above her previous best, 2010’s
The Town
. - Critics, however, gave it a more modest score of 59%, praising some elements while criticizing character development.
The Rotten Tomatoes audience score of Blake Lively’s new romantic drama It Ends With Us marks a new career high. Directed by fellow star Justin Baldoni, It Ends With Us adapts Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel, which revolves around a young girl named Lily, her love interest Ryle, and an old flame, Atlas, who are all caught up in a love triangle. Lively and Baldoni play Lily and Ryle, respectively, and they’re joined by Jenny Slate, Amy Morton, and Brandon Sklenar, who plays Atlas.
Now, according to Rotten Tomatoes, It Ends With Us currently boasts an audience score of 94%, the highest ever for a movie starring Lively. The closest that any of her recent works has come to matching this number is 2010’s The Town, which currently has an audience score of 85%.
Audiences Have Really Embraced It Ends With Us
Critics, Not So Much…
When Hoover released the It Ends With Us novel back in 2016, it got decent attention and sales, but it wasn’t until a couple of years later that social media helped it really take off. It is easy to see why the book garnered so much attention, and it’s also not surprising that audiences have loved Baldoni’s adaptation. The sappy, charming love triangle that drives the movie is exactly the sort of stuff that sells.
It Ends With Us has performed well since it debuted at the box office. Currently, it has grossed $80 million worldwide, already well surpassing its production budget of $25 million. However, while audiences are loving this new release, critics feel a little differently about it. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie’s critics score is a more modest 59% with an average rating of 5.5/10, suggesting that It Ends With Us reviews are pretty much split.
Related
It Ends With Us’ 13 Biggest Book Changes
The It Ends With Us movie keeps the spirit, premise, and characters of the book while fixing problematic elements and improving the messaging.
Some critics have praised Baldoni’s adaptation of It Ends With Us for not romanticizing abuse, one of the major reasons Hoover’s source material has received criticism, as well as for Lively and Baldoni’s impressive, moving performances. However, other critics have pointed out that the movie fails to flesh out most of its characters, especially the supporting cast, and argued that it fails to properly interpret the source material on screen. Though the film is already a hit, it remains to be seen whether these reviews impact its long-term box office success, or whether word-of-mouth will win out.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
It Ends With Us
2.5
Based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel, It Ends With Us is a drama-romance film directed by Justin Baldoni. The film follows a recent college graduate named Lily, who meets a man named Ryle and falls in love with him. However, a traumatic incident compounded with her former high-school sweetheart re-entering her life complicates her plans.
- Director
- Justin Baldoni
- Release Date
- August 9, 2024
- Studio(s)
- Columbia Pictures , Wayfarer Studios , Saks Picture Company
- Distributor(s)
- Sony Pictures Releasing
- Writers
- Christy Hall , Colleen Hoover
- Cast
- Blake Lively , Justin Baldoni , Brandon Sklenar , Jenny Slate , Hasan Minhaj
- Runtime
- 130 Minutes