The Movie Guru: ‘It Ends with Us’ and ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ satisfying for their target audiences
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It Ends with Us (in theaters)
“It Ends with Us” is a good movie for the right audience.
It’s an adaptation of an incredibly popular 2016 romance novel about domestic abuse, with characters aged to catch fans who were now slightly too old for the young adult genre. The domestic abuse element isn’t even slightly skimped on — author Colleen Hoover based the novel on her own parents’ relationship — but the somewhat soapy romantic element isn’t skimped on, either. Director Justin Baldoni handles the material thoughtfully, not sensationalistic but seriously enough that the abuse scenes are frightening. At the same time, his two previous full-length movies were the tearjerkers “Clouds” and “Five Feet Apart,” and the stylistic fingerprints here feel very much the same.
If you’re still interested after everything in the above paragraph, then it’s definitely worth checking out the movie. Blake Lively brings depth and nuance to Lily, a woman raised in an abusive home who finds herself in a similarly violent situation with a surgeon named Ryle. Baldoni makes Ryle convincing, making the line between charming passion and violence as dangerously thin as it can be in real life.
Early reports from fans of the book suggest that they consider it a good adaptation, even though it isn’t as graphic in several ways. For those of us who haven’t read the book, however, whether you like it will depend entirely on whether your tastes run in this direction. If they do, this movie will satisfy. If they don’t, nothing here will convince you to change your mind.
Grade: Two and a half stars
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Harold and the Purple Crayon (in theaters)
This is one of those movies that critics and the target audience have very different opinions about.
Though it uses the beloved children’s books by Crockett Johnson as a starting point, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” admittedly doesn’t share their originality. With Zachary Levi as a grown-up version of Harold who somehow gets transported into our world, the movie itself is a fairly standard “overly innocent character with magical powers gets transported to the real world and runs into challenges (think “Elf,” or “Barbie” without any social commentary). Zooey Deschanel’s presence increases the comparisons to “Elf,” and Levi is admittedly just riffing on the teenager-in-an-adult-body character he played in the “Shazam!” movies. It’s all been done before, a state of affairs critics tend to be incredibly dismissive of.
But even if it’s been done before, that doesn’t mean it’s not pleasant to see it again. If you’re looking for a solid, sweet family film, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” has a lot to offer. The movie passes through all the familiar beats well, doing a good enough job of retelling an old story that you still look forward to hearing the end. Levi is sweet, Deschanel anchors the movie, and Jermaine Clement adds just the right sprinkle of weirdness.
Even better, the movie has a lovely message about the importance of creativity. Even if you argue the movie isn’t creative itself, it wraps the idea in such warm, loving support that you can’t help but feel encouraged. And who knows — maybe even a little inspired.
Grade: Two and a half stars
Jenniffer Wardell is an award-winning movie critic and member of the Denver Film Critics Society. Find her on Twitter at @wardellwriter or drop her a line at themovieguruslc@gmail.com.
