\n\tWhat\u2019s the difference between a good soap opera and a bad soap opera? A good soap opera might have histrionic twists that make your jaw drop, though in some weirdly compelling and quasi-plausible fashion. A bad soap opera might also cause your jaw to drop, but in a \u201cWTF just happened? Give me a break!\u201d kind of way.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt Ends with Us<\/a>,\u201d the smash 2024 movie based on a Colleen Hoover novel, was ultimately overshadowed by the offscreen World War III that erupted between its star, Blake Lively, and her costar and director, Justin Baldoni. But after all the accusations, the lawsuits, the countersuits, the texts (and Taylor Swift!), the movie remains, in my book<\/a>, a stellar entry in the genre \u2014 one that used soap-opera conventions to lure us inside the emotions and illusions of an abusive domestic relationship. The film\u2019s commercial success was a true achievement, because it earned its hits status the old-fashioned way: by telling a melodramatic story that surprised and moved audiences.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cRegretting You<\/a>,\u201d on the other hand, is a soap opera-meets-YA romance, also based on a Colleen Hoover novel, that offers the audience some hooks but can\u2019t hide its essential cheesiness. This one, too, is trying to be an A-list affair, with good actors doing their best to class up the proceedings. Yet when the big twists happen, they have a forehead-slapping quality. The film will likely work for a certain audience (notably teenagers who can swoon over the \u201ctempestuous\u201d but really puppy-love romance between two sensitive and adorable high-school seniors). But to the audience that turned out for \u201cIt Ends with Us,\u201d \u201cRegretting You\u201d may provoke as much unintentional laughter as it does lumps in the throat. Or maybe the laughs are actually, in some bizarre way, almost a deliberate part of it all. One of the defining elements of soap opera is that it has a certain shameless quality, and Josh Boone, the director of \u201cRegretting You,\u201d and his screenwriter, Susan McMartin, don\u2019t appear to be remotely ashamed of what they\u2019re doing. The film\u2019s ever-so-slightly absurd sincerity is nothing if not brazen.<\/p>\n \n\tThe opening scene is a nighttime beach-bash flashback, featuring computerized de-aging (which is very odd to see on actors who aren\u2019t that old to begin with), in which it\u2019s established that Morgan (Allison Williams<\/a>) and Jonah (Dave Franco<\/a>) are earnest, a touch dorky, and meant for each other. Unfortunately, they\u2019re both in relationships with other people. Morgan is a couple with Chris (Scott Eastwood), a hunk bro who tells her that his favorite version of her is when she\u2019s drunk (charming!). Jonah\u2019s girlfriend is Morgan\u2019s sister, Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald), a party girl in cut-offs who looks like she\u2019d eat him alive. Why can\u2019t the partners just\u2026switch? Because there wouldn\u2019t be a movie. Nevertheless, after the story leaps ahead 17 years, we think: Wow, the four did a very good job of sustaining these mismatched, tone-deaf, totally wrong relationships!<\/p>\n