I have never seen a Hallmark movie, watched more than 10 consecutive minutes of a soap opera, nor read a single word written by Colleen Hoover, the romance author whose works have sold over 20 million copies. And, having now experienced the summer blockbuster It Ends with Us, one of the surprise box-office successes of the year, I know I will never have to.

Based on Hoover’s bestselling romance novel from 2016, the screen version of It Ends with Us embodies all of the characteristics commonly associated with the various forms from which it springs or to which it owes a debt: cardboard characterizations, dumb dialogue, and dramatic demonstrations of girl power. Yet the movie’s most salient quality is not its schmaltz but its palpable sense of providence. Like any good soap opera, this is a movie in which extraordinarily unlikely things happen with remarkable regularity. Strangers meet, lose contact, and then find each other again. A couple falls in love, separates, and then is reunited again — in a hip restaurant of all places. On top of everything else, is there anything more improbable than a fictional universe in which the three main characters are named Lily, Ryle, and Atlas?