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The release of this movie could be seen as counter programming, coming out as it does just two weeks after Deadpool & Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds’ film arguably pitches more male whereas this one, starring his wife Blake Lively, may be expected to pick up more of a female audience. Whether this scheduling is deliberate or not it was fun to see Lively jokingly steering audiences away from the competition in an interview with Capital Radio this week.

Whether there has been gender targeting here or not I was pretty much the only guy in the busy screening I saw this in yesterday. Certainly I was the only man there who was not accompanying a woman. The reason I was so keen to see this through was because the trailer strongly reminded me of Lively’s 2015 film The Age of Adeline, which i loved. She was also excellent in The Rhythm Section and The Shallows but they are very different movies to this.

As it turns out this isn’t really a lot like The Age of Adeline either, other than the fact that they have once again cast an actor to play the younger version of a lead character who looks uncannily like the other person. There it was Anthony Ingruber essaying a young Harrison Ford and here it is Isabela Ferrer who looks so much like Blake Lively that I thought they had digitally altered her to achieve the likeness.

I got totally sucked in to the love story in Lively’s 2015 film but while It Ends With Us does have this aspect to it, in two instances with a previous and current relationship for Lively’s Lily Bloom both featuring, it wasn’t this that drew me in. Certainly in terms of her developing affair with Justin Baldoni’s Ryle in the contemporary timeline, he comes across as a bit of a creep right from the start. I’m sure this was not the intention, especially since Baldoni is also the director of the film, but I couldn’t buy into it. Where It Ends With Us really excels is in the handling of the other aspects of the narrative. The central plot is fairly unoriginal, in fact it is very reminiscent of the movie and stage show Waitress if you are familiar with either of those – just switch out a cafe for a flower shop. There is other stuff going on in the lives of these people though and when the story starts to deal with this it is done in a respectful and sensitive way that may prove deeply cathartic and even empowering for those in the audience who have experienced similar circumstances. For the first half of the film I was engaged but not particularly impressed, the other love story is better but doesn’t really have the chance to develop, but by the end I was gripped and cared deeply for the outcome for those involved.

In terms of the Hollywoodised nature of the early part of the film you may have picked up on the lead being called Lily Bloom and working as a florist. I’ve not read Colleen Hoover’s original book but the script here does address the corniness of this in a way that just about allows them to get away with it. Certainly they were never going to change the character’s name as this is a much loved novel. Apparently some readers have already objected to Lily and Ryle being older here but I like Hoover’s response to this. She pointed out that making him thirty on the page was an error as he is a neurosurgeon and no one is a neurosurgeon at that age so this is actually a correction. She doesn’t come across as unaware so I’m sure she owns the naming too.

It Ends With Us is not a perfect film and could certainly have been better in some respects, but the parts it absolutely has to get right it does. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Deadpool & Wolverine that circumstances have placed it alongside but it is undeniably a more grown up movie and just like I found in The Age of Adeline and those other films mentioned, Lively is excellent.