Regretting You
Former high school sweethearts congregate for Josh Boone’s prefabricated romantic tragedy adapted from the pen of Colleen Hoover.
The fault in their stars: Mason Thames and Mckenna Grace
Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
You have to laugh. Every time a major plot development is unveiled, the wrong person walks in to witness it and another false impression is added to the tally. Actually, it’s pretty clear from the start where things are headed and it’s a long wait until anything really unexpected happens. Not that this should worry the intended audience too much, being the same demographic that flocked to see the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. Hoover serves a certain YA sensibility in which uncannily attractive people find themselves entangled in some tragic state of affairs, which only an unguarded kiss or a song by Suki Waterhouse can sort out.
In small-town North Carolina, the romantic future of high school sweethearts Morgan (Allison Williams), Jonah (Dave Franco), Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) and Chris (Scott Eastwood) seems pretty much predetermined. One complication: at a beach party, Morgan refuses a drink and we already know that her future is about to change forever. Seventeen years later, Morgan’s 16-year-old daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) is driving home when she spots a handsome hunk, Miller (Mason Thames), thumbing a lift. In a moment of reckless spontaneity, Clara pulls over, picks him up and her future is about to change forever…
There are a lot of regrets in this latest Hoover adaptation, particularly as the characters refuse to talk to each other – that is, to really, really talk. And so the viewer is expected to stumble across a cobble-stoned narrative of misunderstandings as these privileged souls just can’t seem to express their love in a cogent way. The performances are fine, particularly Allison Williams as Morgan, who is still waiting for her big break after playing Daniel Kaluuya’s girlfriend in Get Out. Unfortunately, this is not it. At times it’s hard to establish whether or not the humour is intentional, as the tone veers between the slapstick of, say, You’re Cordially Invited to the wall-climbing melodrama of August: Osage County. Some of it is intentionally funny (that’s what the supporting characters are there for), but the gut-wrenching, tear-jerking showdowns don’t work because the characters are just so, well, plastic.
If Regretting You does succeed in any area it is in the parent-daughter dynamic of Morgan and Clara, which suggests there might be material of a more mature nature yet to come from the Colleen Hoover stable. Besides, no parent should ever regret the child that they have banished to its bedroom.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Sam Morelos, Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald, Clancy Brown, Ethan Costanilla.
Dir Josh Boone, Pro Robert Kulzer, Brunson Green, Anna Todd and Flavia Viotti, Ex Pro Oliver Berben, Colleen Hoover, Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco, Jon D. Wagner, Emily Magee, Pete Chiappetta, Anthony Tittanegro, Andrew Lary, Michael Rothstein, Samuel Hall and Warren Goz, Screenplay Susan McMartin, from the novel by Colleen Hoover, Ph Tim Orr, Pro Des Brittany Hites, Ed Marc Clark and Robb Sullivan, Music Nathaniel Walcott, Costumes Errin Knight.
Constantin Film/Harbinger Pictures/Frayed Pages Entertainment/Heartbones Entertainment-Paramount Pictures.
115 mins. USA/Germany. 2025. UK and US Rel: 24 October 2025. Cert. 12A.
