If there’s one thing I love more than a bad movie, it’s a bad movie with a backstory. Here comes an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s mindless best-selling novel It ends with uswith Blake Lively (who also produced) and Justin Baldoni (who also produced And The details of the film are almost irrelevant compared to the details of the alleged mini-feud that seems to be coming to light through the film’s promotion: Most of the cast, as social media users with plenty of time on their hands have noticed, have unfollowed Baldoni on Instagram and completely dodged press questions about him. The prevailing rumor so far is that Baldoni was blindsided by Lively — and her husband, Ryan Reynolds — during the film’s post-production. Others speculate that Baldoni made Lively uncomfortable on set and that the rest of the cast sided with the Go Piss Girl in solidarity.

Both versions of reality are quite plausible: On the one hand, Lively (along with her husband) is a powerful Hollywood figure and one of the film’s producers. On the other hand, men. But after seeing It ends with usI am now less curious about who has the real ownership of this film, but more curious about why someone want ownership rights to it. Perhaps Baldoni should view the rumors that Lively has taken control as a blessing: He can live in a world where this film is not his work.

I’m going to tell you the ending of the movie now, because it’s bad: Blake plays Lily Blossom Bloom (I know), a young woman who is about to open her own flower shop (I knowledge) called “Lily Blooms,” which is stupid, because “Lily’s Blooms” is just that. The film cuts between teenage Lily (ably played by an underemployed Isabela Ferrer) banging her first love (who also happens to be homeless?), and adult Lily and her relationship with her husband Ryle. Ryle was probably named that because he’s very easy to piss Ryled off over nothing—much of the film is about him physically abusing his wife for burning some eggs or being jealous of the guy she dated in high school. (If it sounds like I’m dismissing domestic violence, I guarantee you that’s not the case. This film is largely detached from reality.)

Throughout the film, Ryle beats Lily, pushes her down a flight of stairs, sexually abuses her, then tries to bite off a tattoo she got in honor of her first love. (The film is a bit restrained here; violence is creatively hidden from the audience, not showing us more than we absolutely need to see.) She gets pregnant, leaves her husband, names the baby after the brother Ryle accidentally killed as a child (the supposed cause of his anger issues), and asks for a divorce. It’s an absolute torrent of smoke, a domestic violence awareness campaign drenched in Gucci’s Bloom, replete with a main character who feels like she was written by three prepubescent girls guessing what men might like in a woman. Lily, who seems allergic to hairbrushes, flutters around in manic pixie dreamgirl mode before finally finding the strength to leave an abusive relationship behind after giving birth to a little girl.

I saw the film last night in a suburban cinema in Alberta. My 70-year-old mother is a Hoover fan. The shelves in my parents’ house, which were once filled exclusively with novels about black people, are now filled with paperbacks about white women’s longing. As we took our seats, the 16-year-old girls in the row behind us raised their fists in solidarity. “It ends with us,” they said. My mother, who had never had anything in common with a teenager in her life, although she supposedly was one once, smiled broadly at them.

Do you know how embarrassing it is to watch a movie with your parents when a sex scene suddenly appears on the screen? There you are, trying to spend some time with your family, when you freeze in your seat because two writhing bodies are artfully rubbing their butts. It ends with us in the cinema has a similarly creepy effect, except you’re the adult and the audience is full of teenage girls who have never seen a man’s bare chest in their lives. At every sex scene, the audience groaned in embarrassment. “So embarrassing,” the girls behind me chirped. “So hot.” In fact, the teenagers got the gist of this film: It’s so embarrassing and so hot (if you’re a virgin).

During the 2 hours and 10 minutes long film (it is longer than Casablanca?!), I always wondered whose fault that was. Is It ends with us Lively’s baby, as she has said so many times in interviews about the film? Is it Baldoni’s fault as a director? Who else can I blame for one of the film’s strangest unexplained plot threads: Lily’s childhood love for… Ellen DeGeneres? You expect me to believe that this teenager – living in the heyday of… Ellen in the early 2010s, who has a smartphone and a laptop (presumably) or at least access to a library – writes handwritten letters to … Ellen?

But allow me to reassure both Lively and Baldoni, whose roles in this film are still somewhat unclear to the public: Neither has ever had this much control. No matter how much acting Baldoni’s jawline does (and boy, does she carry some scenes all by herself) and no matter how much Lively bites her lower lip (someone went to Bella Swan’s acting school, I see), the film is not about either of them. It’s about Hoover, who brought this film to light through her extremely popular books. The names Lily Blossom Bloom and Ryle? Hoover’s guilt. The obsession with Ellen? Hoover’s work – in fact, Lily’s daughter’s middle name in the book is “Dory,” for reasons that you, as a non-idiot, will probably understand by now. The fact that every single character seems unable to relate to another unless there is a history of extreme violence, abuse, and trauma? That’s Hoover.

Baldoni and Lively still seem to be subtly feuding in the press about the film. There is resurfaced footage of them in what are called heated arguments on set. It seems as though a rift has developed between the cast and the director, which is not entirely unusual on a film set, but perhaps on a film like this. But allow me to direct the credit – or blame, so to speak – to its rightful recipient. It ends with us Hoover – who, to be fair, is an executive producer on the film – is all about it; it’s pure fan service, so if you’re going to watch this plodding, condescending film for the Lifetime channel, you’d best be a fan of the books.

When the movie ended, I asked the two teenagers sitting behind us if they liked it. “It was good, but they cut out so much!” the 16-year-old said. “What about the magnet? What about the poker game?” I had no idea what they were talking about, but my mother agreed—the book had a lot more detail and grit, much of which was cut from the movie for time reasons. Here, a bunch of mischievous teenagers in Zumiez hoodies and my 70-year-old mother in a custom knee brace found a charming common ground: gesticulating wildly at each other and talking about all the things the movie got wrong. They were insulted by the liberties the movie took, the lack of detail compared to the novel. No one in this theater was ever here for Baldoni or Lively; it was Hoover all the way through. down.