Analyzing the Movie Adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us: Casting, Promotion, and Viewer Experiences

we discuss it? I think we should. Let’s discuss the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. I’ve got all my facts and figures typed down on my iPad so I think we should get into it. Where to begin? I watched the Justin Baldoni adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us on Sunday. It got released on the Friday so I watched it opening week if you will on the Sunday. I went with a few of my girlfriends from the book club and we… I was gonna say we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but story time at the end. Let me just get my book, hold on. Here’s the book. I read it within like three days. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I thought it highlighted such pressing matters and I was really excited to see how it was portrayed in the film. I’m gonna leave it there. Should I leave it there? So before going to see the movie I’d accidentally seen some press stuff for it. It kind of tainted how I thought about the movie going into it which was good and bad in different ways but I’ll elaborate on that in just a second. Okay I’m gonna start on my thoughts and opinion on how it compared to the book. Obviously the book went into a lot more depth because you have 300 and what pages of context whereas you only have an hour and 40 minutes of film. I feel like they missed out a lot of the key components. My biggest issue was the Everything’s Better in Boston magnet. I feel the book was more in depth. Definitely described Ryle and Lily’s relationship a lot more than what it did in the movie and I think that’s why the book was a lot more hard hitting with the subjects. Don’t hate me but from about 20 minutes in I was like when’s this film going to end? What I did love about the film was the flashbacks to young Lily and Atlas. I thought they did them really well mainly because I thought they casted them really well. What I did love was the Colleen cameo at the party. I really liked that they had her there. A big one. Casting. Let’s talk about the casting and what I thought about them. I don’t know why I just sounded Australian. I want to start with who I adored. I loved Jenny Slate who played Alyssa, Ryle’s sister. I thought she was perfect casting for it. She brought some lightheartedness to where it needed to be. I loved her style. I loved the fact she walked into a dusty crusty old shop with her Birkin bag. It was just great. Okay I think Justin Baldoni as Ryle was brilliant. I absolutely loved him. He had kind of had that romantic side casting and portraying that Jekyll and Hyde side to Ryle. Blake Lively aka Lily Bloom. Okay when I initially saw the casting come out for this I was like great it’s Blake Lively. I love Blake Lively. I feel like her acting is just kind of like one thing. I feel like she can only act in one thing. Every time she bit her lip it was giving Serena Van Der Woodsen and I just wasn’t there for it. Opinion. My opinion only. Please don’t hate me. I just want to quickly talk about the style, the fashion, the dress code in this film. It was giving all autumnal for Gilmore Girls at the beginning and then what the hell was Lily Bloom wearing throughout the rest of the film? I wasn’t a fan. I really wasn’t a fan. I feel like I have to touch on this because of everything that’s going around on social media, TikTok, news outlets etc and it’s the promotion of the film. Okay what do I say? I don’t even know how to begin with this. So if you’re not aware Justin Baldoni directed the film who played Ryle. Blake Lively helped produce the film who played Lily Bloom. I feel like there’s conflict of interest straight off the bat when you hire actors to play production roles and director roles etc. I think there’s a lot of conflict of interest there and if you’ve seen there’s a lot of promotional clips where Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively are not seen together at all and you would have thought because they’re both main characters they would at least do the press together. No. I think there’s definitely a difference in how they want to promote this film and I want to highlight everyone they invited to the movie premieres. Okay I’ve seen both the movie premieres for like the US and the UK. Tell me why a lot of the people invited are beauty influencers and I’m not saying they can’t be invited and they’re not a fan of the book and they’re not a fan of Colleen’s work but why were Love Islanders invited and dressing to the nines to go to this movie premiere which I’m not saying they haven’t read the book. I’m not saying they’ve not done their research but watching the answers of some of these people on why they think this film is so important really scares me. Really does. Okay I want to touch on my experience of watching the film because I think this is really valid to everything I’ve just discussed. There were two middle-aged men sat behind me and my friends in the cinema. I’m not saying they’re not a fan of Colleen okay and may I tell you what they said at the end? Okay listen tight listen tight. She’s lost him too early he’s only hit her three times. That’s my Scouse accent I’m so sorry. And this is what the whole film’s about. I think it’s attracted a lot of the wrong demographic potentially which is potentially why those two men were there although Justin Baldoni and other people behind the scenes are trying to do hard work to promote this film for what it is I just think it’s not worked out in their favour and when Colleen comes to do the next movie adaptation of one of her books I think it’s verity. I really hope they take all of this into consideration but that’s my whistle-stop review of the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. Let me know what you think in the comments and if you agree or disagree with anything. Yeah I’m done.