And it should end with them because…yikes.

C/TW: domestic violence

Well…that happened. 

I just want to start off by saying that I volunteered to see and review this movie before I knew Blake Lively put her foot in her mouth. So, I gotta be honest: it was really hard not to bring my freshly developed opinions of her into my judgment of this movie.

I confess: I have not read the book by Colleen Hoover. I haven’t read any of her work, even though I know she’s been blowing up in popularity for a hot minute now.

My first exposure to all of the drama surrounding the director, cast, and crew was from this video on YouTube. And there really is no room for misconstruing how tone deaf Blake chose to be – repeatedly.

I don’t think she even did any research on victims of domestic abuse; not to say that all instances of domestic violence are the same – they are not. Everyone deals with their own personal trauma differently, of course, and abuse can manifest in many different forms. Yet…the absolute blunt ignorance of Lively when talking about the film as a whole is insane!! When I think of how I felt watching Scars Unseen: Changing the Conversation around Domestic Violence, it’s like these films were made on two different planets.

This didn’t feel like a stretch for Lively in terms of her performance. She wasn’t acting any differently than her character in, say, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or The Age of Adaline. To her, here is another wounded, moody woman trying to live her life quietly but not quite getting to succeed at that because she’s just so strikingly beautiful. (And, sure, Lively is gorgeous – on the outside, at least.) What a wild overgeneralization of this character. The film could’ve been something if the character Lively “played” was cast as someone who actually took this content seriously. So disappointing.

All this to say, it did not feel like she was even attempting to tackle the violence and trauma her character had witnessed and survived. However, I’m not sure if it seemed like this because she allegedly took over directorially and the cut that made it to the theatres was not Justin Baldoni’s? Or maybe she just hasn’t grown or developed over the years because, as we now know, she is very out of touch. (Like…launching and promoting your personally-branded hair care line on the same day as this movie premiere? Come on.)

It felt like we never really explored why Lively’s character was so distant; it was only implied. Her choices felt baseless, there was no foundation of her character to begin with to make them make sense. Sadly, because of this, Lively’s character had no depth. She’d tell Baldoni’s character, Ryle, to stop doing something (i.e. trying to flirt with her, pursuing her; I don’t even know…again: unclear), yet her delivery was almost always coy and flirty. It was made no sense. Why does she seem so off? Her reasons are never clear so I was never invested. It felt like she was just following the script because it told her to “reject” him, not because Lively’s performance was giving “conflicted.”

Also, there was no trigger warning at the beginning of this movie. I don’t know if there’s one at the start of Hoover’s book either, but my God. Hello? Instead I have Blake’s voice ringing in my head as she enthusiastically yells, “Wear your florals!!!” (My eyes have been rolling so much and so often that I think you could actually hear them clatter around against my skull.) The best they could do was put the hotline phone numbers after the cast list in the ending credits? Pleaseee.

Moving on from Lively’s work and how this film was “handled,” I had many questions about the film itself. For example, how could she possibly still be in love with Atlas, her serious boyfriend at the time that they were older teens/young adults, now? They interacted maybe one to three times and now she’s =unsure about her feelings towards him… What? How old are they supposed to be now? They have to be in their thirties. It just doesn’t track for me.

Also – why were they constantly speaking over each other? The stuttering, overlapping dialogue got old real quick. I’m not sure if this was a directorial choice or Lively’s try-hard attempt to seem natural? In either case, sprinkle that in sometimes; not all of the time, it really didn’t read as a choice Lively was making for the sake of her character.

A final side note: the pacing dragged, the script was weak for the vast majority of the film’s duration, and these character’s names made me want to hurl. Lily Blossom Bloom? Ryle Kincaid? Atlas Corrigan? Oh my gosh. I’m sorry, but are we on Wattpad?

Anyway, in terms of the few positives about this movie: the men were surprisingly more impressive in terms of their performances, except for Jenny Slate. Thank God for Jenny Slate. She saved this damn movie, to be quite honest with you. She crafted her character, Allysa (Ryle’s sister), to be a funny but earnest, rich woman who means well but is a little wildly outspoken in a charming way. She was giving everything, even in her dramatic scenes. I love when comedic actors are given the opportunity to flex their talent in more ways than the one they are famous for. You continue to step outside that box, Jenny.

The one thing I appreciated about the storytelling was the re-remembering of the assaults. At first, when we see Lily hit by Ryle, we think it’s unintentional. The way the shots were edited together present to us an image of a terrible accident; same with the moment she “slipped” on a step and fell down a flight of stairs. Later in the film, we see these moments replayed, now presented with new clips of what really happened: Baldoni’s character did hit Lively’s purposefully, as well as pushed her down the stairs. This choice to see Lily realize after the fact what her partner has been doing to her was effective and felt raw and true to what victims experience.

I would not recommend seeing this movie. Hopefully the book is better, as it so often is or at least more tasteful. So, if you want to see Blake Lively treat a drama about a very real, intense issue as a teenage rom-com, be my guest.

Rating: 1 Hair Care Line out of 5

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