Talk about a movie that became famous for all the wrong reasons. It was top of the charts along with Deadpool and Wolverine when it came out, and the fact that the husband and wife team of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were at the top of the box office together might have been media narrative enough.

But you can't talk about it without acknowledging the legal spat that consumed everyone even a little bit involved afterwards, and which I still see news about as I write these words a year later.

The lawsuits started out ugly and quickly descended into farce as Baldoni and Lively sued or subpoenaed each other, each other's publicists, their own publicists (former publicists even sued each other), the media that have talked about the case and even other celebrities like Taylor Swift.

Even without the irony of two stars making a story about domestic violence turning into a circus of sexual harassment accusations, has there ever been a Hollywood lawsuit so 2020s it almost swallowed an unrelated pop star?

That, of course, followed the scandal that swirled up around Lively during the press tour to promote the film, where people didn't think she was serious enough about domestic violence issues, talking about her hair care products instead.

So after all that, what I was most interested in was whether there was any kind of storytelling quality it was possible to decouple from the shitshow its very existence is now mired in. I wonder if either the director/costar and star regret making it or are proud of their work, despite everything?

I was also quite surprised to see it get such a low Rotten Tomatoes score - I kept imagining an issue-of-the-week TV movie from the 80s handling a topic like domestic violence with a lot less finesse. As Ryle, Baldoni is never a monster standing over Lily (Lively) with a belt and a snarl like you'd think Hollywood would depict a wife beater.

Some of the criticisms I've read - that it doesn't know what it is, that it feels like a romcom about domestic violence, that it's too didactic, etc – I didn't get at all.

As we meet aspiring florist Lily (Lively), her father has died back in her small hometown, a powerful man in local politics whose funeral service is so crowded he was obviously beloved. But Lily, taking her mother's advice, writes five nice things to say about him on a napkin, stands at the podium, hesitates, apologises softly and leaves, the napkin still bare.

Probably inspired by the structure of the Colleen Hoover novel it's based on, it spends the rest of the movie setting up why Lily evidently hated her father. It's obvious during flashback scenes of her as a schoolgirl that she was terrified of her dad, and it's revealed he frequently beat Lily's mother and – when he discovers Lily with the boy she intends to lose her virginity to – bashes him so badly he puts him in hospital.

Returning home to Boston after the funeral, Lily is preparing to execute her dream and open a flower shop. She meets sexy neurosurgeon Ryle on the rooftop of his apartment building, talking and flirting before he's called away to perform an emergency surgery, and she figures she'll never see him again.

But when a chatty young woman, Allysa (Jenny Slate) comes into the shop, excited there's going to finally be something there, it's a meet cute straight out of a romcom when Lily appoints her as the first employee. When it turns out Allysa is Ryle's sister, it puts him back in her orbit, and as she works to get the flower shop up to speed, the pair fall in love.

But it's when eating at a fancy restaurant to introduce her mother to her new beau that she runs into the boy she loved as a teenager, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), now a successful restaurateur.

We learn more about Atlas' backstory in flashbacks of the pair – he lived in an abandoned house opposite where Lily grew up, escaping an abusive boyfriend of his mother's, so Lily starts to gradually take care of him, starting with leaving a bag of food, letting him come to her place and use her shower, and eventually the pair fall for each other hard.

Now he's back, but Lily's with the stormier, darker Ryle, so it's going to be complicated enough without Ryle soon showing his true colours. He hits her when he burns his hand on the oven and she leans in to help, insisting it was an accident.

Later, Atlas has insisted Lily take down his number, convinced Ryle's been abusive towards her, and when Ryle finds it, they argue so much Lily leaves the apartment. He follows her, still angry, and even though he later insists she tripped and he tried to catch her, it's revealed during a later recap scene he's actually pushed her down the stairs.

But it gets worse (as it always does). When he reads in a magazine article about Atlas' restaurant that he named it after Lily, he starts to insist they have sex, Lily pleading with increasing fear and seriousness for him to stop.

She leaves the apartment in desperation, going to Atlas' place for want of anywhere else to feel safe. He takes care of her, telling her she can stay as long as she needs, begging her to leave Ryle and it's there the first of several bombshells land – she discover's she pregnant, and Allysa tells her she and Ryle had a third sibling the latter accidentally killed in a gun accident.

The denouement is fairly low key and quiet dramatically. Ryle turns up crying and promising to change, etc, but Lily delivers the promise of the title with their baby in her arms in a soliloquy about the cycle of abuse in a scene that was heartfelt but I feel like would have worked better in the book.

It moves, feels and is dressed and shot like a romantic comedy, which might explain how some critics felt wrong-footed by the subject matter, but that only makes it an attractive movie to watch. Maybe I was swayed because I find Lively so watchable. Even though she can play a young woman she has such an old soul quality that's magical in the right film (like it was in the sublime The Age of Adaline).