My wife and I weren’t familiar with this story, but we brought her friend, who loved the book (and loved the movie). It helped that we didn’t know the story because it was much more interesting to see the directions it goes in. Every review you’ll see of this movie will give those elements away. This review will be spoiler free.
Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) goes home for her father’s funeral. She seems to be more angry at her mom than sad. She’s itching to get back to Boston to open her florist shop (with a name like Lily Bloom, what else would she do?).
There’s a meet-cute that actually is cute, and very funny. That’s one of my biggest complaints with rom-coms. They’re usually just cheesy, and I always wonder why the woman is falling for the guy. But this guy, Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directed), is a good looking neurosurgeon.
A woman named Allysa (Jenny Slate) always walks by the shop and sees it’s finally opening, and gets a job there. It turns out her husband (Hasan Minhaj, who also played a fun husband in the great movie “Babes” from earlier this year) and brother come to the shop before a Bruins game and guess what? It’s the guy she met in the beginning of the film, and almost had a make-out session with. So they resume their flirtation. She knows he’s a womanizer (he admitted that the first time they met), and Allysa also warns Lily. Now, if you don’t know where the story goes, let’s just leave it at that. You can sit in the theater wondering if he’s going to cheat or not, or wonder if it’s going to be Lily who finds a guy that doesn’t have a scalpel in his hand, but a green thumb.
We get flashbacks of a young Lily (Isabela Ferrer) with her first boyfriend, Atlas (Alex Neustaedter). He’s having a rough time in his life, and it’s interesting watching them bond.
This is all based on the best-seller by Colleen Hoover, with a sharp script by Christy Hall (who gave us “Daddio” last month).
I really can’t believe how much I enjoyed this movie. Sure, there were some missteps, where you wonder about why characters did or said certain things, but not many. The shaky-camera was annoying (this isn’t some action picture). And there were three moments where a goofy pop song played, like we were watching a Taylor Swift video. In moments like that, it felt like a cheesy YA movie. This was smart enough, and tackled issues well enough, that it would be lazy for critics to just say it was some Lifetime movie. It’s better than that.
3 stars out of 5.