Plot Summary – Lily Bloom moves to Boston to chase her lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid soon sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, she begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship

★  

Watched 10 Aug 2024

I was gonna originally leave a snarky one-liner like “It ended me” or something but I actually have some nuanced thoughts about this movie. This is a pretty terrible film. In addition to being a pretty terrible actor, Justin Baldoni is an atrocious director.

Every shot, every scene, and every passage look the same. He does nothing interesting with the lighting, angles, or anything. Not expecting this to be shot like a PTA film but this particular issue is important to me because the film’s boring pacing, terrible look, and the constant reliance on stock footage of Boston is just the icing on the poop cake that is the writing of this film. I acknowledge that the source material is bad and as an adaptation, there are only so many liberties they can take. As a director or a writer or any self-respecting artist I don’t understand why someone would go about this endeavour though.

This did not need to be a movie. This would’ve worked better as a 10-minute high school PSA video or a short story. There is no point in adapting this and to a worse extent, adapting it in such a soulless, boring, and milquetoast way. This movie is insanely cringeworthy. I was not the only one in the audience laughing at some of the horribly written exchanges. Blake Lively is trying her best but she needs to try harder to make anything out of this script cause even her performance began to annoy me at a certain point. Just because your themes and message are virtuous that doesn’t make you exempt from showing some artistic expression.

I wish I had nice things to say about this movie but there’s really not much. Everything from the needle drops to the transitions, to the montages, to the flashbacks were done as poorly as they could. There are thousands of YouTube video essays with more thought, creativity and soul put into them. But you’ll go see it anyways if you’re predisposed like half the crowd of the theater I was in who were sobbing by the end of the movie and discussing how good it was. This is when I feel the most gatekeeper-y about film. Maybe this isn’t for all of you.

I’m just kidding.