An average movie

Following all the fuss around this movie, since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, I think it’s too bad for Blake Lively that, even though she finally had a box-office hit, it was after all completely obscured by all the legal shenanigans between her and Justin Baldoni. Even though making a sequel from the following book ‘It Starts with Us’ might have seemed a no-brainer, since Baldoni holds the rights to this book, it is very unlikely that it might happen after all. Anyway, how was the damned thing after all? Well, it was certainly half-baked, that’s for sure. The first thing that bothered me was how glossy the whole thing looked. Indeed, Atlas was probably the cleanest and least convincing homeless guy I have ever seen. Lily Bloom’s flower shop looked more like a film set like than an actual shop, without mentioning how unlikely it would be that she could bankroll the whole thing on her own. Finally, Justin Baldoni’s chiseled look was so over-the-top, he actually looked more like a boy band member than a neurosurgeon (Lively was slightly more believable but the focus on her look and sophisticated wardrobe was also rather annoying). Another bewildering choice was that, even though this movie was supposed to be about domestic abuse, it took like forever to tackle this subject. I thought it was also rather weird that, before it did escalate, there were like no real red flags about Ryle. Eventually, there were actually 3 incidents but all of them were shot in a way that it was actually rather unclear what really happened which was rather frustrating. Sure, you could argue that, as a victim, Lily was so traumatized that she didn’t remember properly what exactly happened but I don’t know, I thought it was rather annoying. And yet, the damned thing was still intriguing though, above all, because you see very few movies about this subject nowadays. Furthermore, even though Justin Baldoni did get a major bucket of sh*t on his head (maybe deservedly so), he was not bad, at least, his character was more interesting. The other thing that worked was the trauma shared by Lily and Atlas regarding domestic violence and this link was touching and intriguing. However, as a witness of domestic violence, you would assume that she would have been so much more triggered by the ‘accidents’ involving Ryle, like Atlas was. Anyway, to conclude, even though most of it actually didn’t work, I guess it is still worth a look, even if my rating was probably too generous here. 

6/10