![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/3dda3d23a276faed43b572b5c382e073d2-regrettingyou-review.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Photo: Paramount Pictures\n <\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t read any of Colleen Hoover\u2019s work, so it\u2019s entirely possible that her books are just as insane as the new film Regretting You, based on her 2019 novel. But I\u2019m tempted to credit this one to the filmmakers, as well as the cast \u2014 in particular, Allison Williams, who is quickly becoming our reigning deadpan queen of the absurd. When she conveys agitation, Williams has a uniquely hard stare that I\u2019ve never really seen on any other actress: When she glares, her eyes seem fixed to a different axis than the rest of her face, so they appear to float in the air. It\u2019s remarkable. It\u2019s hilarious. It\u2019s incredible. She doesn\u2019t even have to emote that much, but she can turn anything into a comedy, and she knows it. (See also: M3gan.) She\u2019s wonderful. Cast her in everything.<\/p>\n
There are no great revelations in Regretting You, though the story unfolds like there are. The film opens sometime around 2006 (a radio helpfully informs us that the Killers have a new song out called \u201cWhen You Were Young\u201d) with a partying quartet of obviously mismatched teenagers: Morgan (Williams, de-aged like just about everyone else) is dating Chris (Scott Eastwood) while Jonah (Dave Franco) clearly longs for her, despite the fact that he is dating Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald), Morgan\u2019s sister. Jonah and Morgan don\u2019t like to drink, and they spend a lot of their time together, while Jenny and Chris are clearly highly compatible party fiends. Unfortunately, Morgan has just gotten pregnant, so her future with Chris is now set in stone. (This is, after all, fictional-romance-friendly small-town North Carolina, where everyone knows each other, hunks hitchhike on country roads, and teenage fates are inescapable.) The film then jumps forward 17 years: Morgan and Chris are still together, and the aforementioned impending fruit of their union, Clara (Mckenna Grace), is now a senior in high school. Jonah and Jenny have finally gotten married and have a newborn \u2014 it turns out their initial high-school romance was short-lived since Jonah mysteriously skipped town (hmmm, I wonder why) not long after that opening sequence, but now he\u2019s back and they\u2019re back together and they\u2019ve got a kid and everything\u2019s going super, only of course it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Things go spiraling when Chris and Jenny suddenly die in a car accident (this is not a spoiler; it\u2019s the inciting incident) and the daft duo of Morgan and Jonah discover that their spouses were having an affair. Of course, this should clear the way for them to finally do what they\u2019ve always secretly longed to, but the film understandably takes its time getting there. There is, after all, some grieving to do. Except that there isn\u2019t: The revelation of the affair results in the ordinarily predictable, reliable, always-there Morgan suddenly turning into a reality-TV-binging wine mom, slowly destroying the house she lives in, which was Chris\u2019s childhood home \u2014 much to the consternation of Clara, who not only loved her dad but also idolized her cool Aunt Jenny. In fact, Clara blames herself for the accident because when it occurred, she happened to be texting Jenny about her burgeoning romance with local stud Miller (Mason Thames, as ubiquitous as an MPAA rating nowadays) and thinks she distracted Jenny while driving. Little does Clara know that her beloved two-timing dad was driving Jenny\u2019s car at the time. Anyway, the texting sequences in this film, with words popping up onscreen while the characters heatedly speak the dialogue in voice-over as their quiet physical selves calmly tap away on their phones, are amazing.<\/p>\n
Despite my fondness for some of those old Nicholas Sparks movies, I admittedly may not be the intended audience for this film. My not-very-crowded opening-night audience applauded when Morgan and Jonah finally kissed (almost enough to drown out the loud snores of the guy several seats away from me), though their cheering did have a pro forma quality to it; it seemed to be part of the ritual. These stories don\u2019t require any element of surprise; the appeal of this kind of romance is built on anticipation, on our expectation that people who are destined to be together will in fact get together.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a perfectly good melodrama to be made from the plot of Regretting You, which on its surface isn\u2019t so much a twisty-turny soap opera as it is a multicharacter wallow in uncontrolled emotions. It\u2019s how this specific movie presents all the wallowing that made me feel like I was hallucinating. To go with Williams\u2019s turbo-loaded deadpan, Franco\u2019s relentlessly dry delivery adds another layer of weirdness, giving his dialogue a droning quality. Both actors seem to be fighting against the overt emotionality of the material by tamping everything down \u2014 internalizing, as film actors are supposed to do. It doesn\u2019t work, but it really doesn\u2019t work when set against Grace\u2019s performance as Clara, which clears the knobs on the emotionality meter.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to tell just how much of the humor in this film is intentional. Perhaps the idea is to show how awkward things can happen in the midst of unspeakable sadness (I am reminded of the heartbreaking little moment in Manchester by the Sea when a gurney carrying one of the protagonist\u2019s dead kids hits a little bump on its way to the ambulance), but here it all feels so choreographed, so telegraphed, that abject lunacy ensues. It\u2019s not hard to grasp on an intellectual level that Clara\u2019s fervor is meant to contrast with Jonah and Morgan\u2019s evident coldness. But this requires a deft directorial hand \u2014 otherwise, we feel like we\u2019re lost in the mind of someone who doesn\u2019t understand people, or emotions, or the world. Director Josh Boone will cut to a goofy montage right after a moment when a character is supposed to be mired in anguish. He\u2019ll shoot an emotional climax in an AMC lobby (Miller, an aspiring film student, works at the local multiplex) and make sure to light it like an AMC commercial, bland and flat but somehow still harsh. Characters speak in one-liners at funerals. Clancy Brown shows up as Miller\u2019s dying jokester grandpa. Are the filmmakers trying to undercut the drama, or do they just not know what they\u2019re doing? Then again, I\u2019m probably overthinking it. My audience didn\u2019t just cheer for the make-out sessions, they also laughed in all the right (i.e., wrong) places. They wanted a good time, and they got it.<\/p>\n